School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Orion Coopers?

In 2026/27, Orion Coopers offered 252 places and 107 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.42

first choices for every place available

107 first preferences for 252 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Orion Coopers

There is no published appeal success rate for Orion Coopers, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Bromley 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 Bromley, 5.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 390 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 Bromley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bromley 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

Orion Coopers turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 6 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Orion Coopers, 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 0.91 per place 246 first choices 271 places 2016/17 0.84 per place 226 first choices 269 places 2017/18 1.21 per place 316 first choices 262 places 2018/19 1.58 per place 418 first choices 264 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 293 first choices 252 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 243 first choices 249 places 2021/22 1.07 per place 264 first choices 247 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 225 first choices 248 places 2023/24 0.63 per place 161 first choices 256 places 2024/25 0.62 per place 146 first choices 236 places 2025/26 0.58 per place 145 first choices 251 places 2026/27 0.42 per place 107 first choices 252 places
First preferences per place at Orion Coopers. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 107 first preferences for 252 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Orion Coopers, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 271 246 200 0.91
2016/17 269 226 176 0.84
2017/18 262 316 208 1.21
2018/19 264 418 202 1.58
2019/20 252 293 185 1.16
2020/21 249 243 187 0.98
2021/22 247 264 179 1.07
2022/23 248 225 151 0.91
2023/24 256 161 142 0.63
2024/25 236 146 130 0.62
2025/26 251 145 145 0.58
2026/27 252 107 107 0.42

Places offered

252

in 2026/27

Named first choice

107

572 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

107 of 107

Offers to families outside the council

35%

80 of 228 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

1,256

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,135

90.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

121

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

379

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 Orion Coopers 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 Orion Coopers reported 121 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.4% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Orion Coopers from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,629 places 1,408 on roll 2011/12 1,629 places 1,339 on roll 2012/13 1,629 places 1,374 on roll 2013/14 1,629 places 1,363 on roll 2014/15 1,629 places 1,376 on roll 2015/16 1,629 places 1,441 on roll 2016/17 1,629 places 1,482 on roll 2017/18 1,629 places 1,532 on roll 2018/19 1,629 places 1,641 on roll 2020/21 1,629 places 1,659 on roll 2021/22 1,629 places 1,593 on roll 2022/23 1,629 places 1,380 on roll 2023/24 1,629 places 1,282 on roll 2024/25 1,635 places 1,311 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.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bromley

Postcode BR7 5PS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136464).

Other contested secondary schools in Bromley

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.