School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Turton School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 16 families who named Turton School as their first choice did not get a place: 252 put it first and 236 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Bolton actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

16

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

252 first preferences for 259 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Turton School

There is no published appeal success rate for Turton School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Bolton as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Bolton, 22% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 192 of 873 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Bolton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bolton ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Turton School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Turton School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.03 per place 242 first choices 234 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 242 first choices 238 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 261 first choices 268 places 2018/19 1.08 per place 287 first choices 266 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 260 first choices 266 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 246 first choices 267 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 262 first choices 266 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 295 first choices 269 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 276 first choices 266 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 270 first choices 263 places 2025/26 0.89 per place 236 first choices 264 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 252 first choices 259 places
First preferences per place at Turton School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 252 first preferences for 259 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Turton School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 234 242 221 1.03
2016/17 238 242 211 1.02
2017/18 268 261 246 0.97
2018/19 266 287 238 1.08
2019/20 266 260 240 0.98
2020/21 267 246 229 0.92
2021/22 266 262 238 0.98
2022/23 269 295 250 1.1
2023/24 266 276 243 1.04
2024/25 263 270 249 1.03
2025/26 264 236 233 0.89
2026/27 259 252 236 0.97

Places offered

259

in 2026/27

Named first choice

252

523 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.7%

236 of 252

Offers to families outside the council

7%

17 of 259 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

1,345

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,323

98.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

22

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

305

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Turton School has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Turton School reported 22 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.4% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Turton School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,513 places 1,650 on roll 2010/11 1,635 places 1,631 on roll 2011/12 1,635 places 1,655 on roll 2012/13 1,635 places 1,635 on roll 2013/14 1,635 places 1,577 on roll 2014/15 1,469 places 1,549 on roll 2015/16 1,469 places 1,497 on roll 2016/17 1,514 places 1,489 on roll 2017/18 1,514 places 1,510 on roll 2018/19 1,664 places 1,536 on roll 2020/21 1,665 places 1,568 on roll 2021/22 1,665 places 1,587 on roll 2022/23 1,665 places 1,596 on roll 2023/24 1,665 places 1,602 on roll 2024/25 1,650 places 1,611 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Turton School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Turton School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
16 August 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3402 to ADA3412 and ADA3424

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bolton

Postcode BL7 9LT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 105253).

Other contested secondary schools in Bolton

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.