School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Orion Eden Park?

In 2026/27, Orion Eden Park offered 229 places and 66 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Bromley actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

0.29

first choices for every place available

66 first preferences for 229 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Orion Eden Park

There is no published appeal success rate for Orion Eden Park, 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 Eden Park turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 9 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 3 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 Eden Park, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 0.79 per place 171 first choices 216 places 2019/20 1.2 per place 301 first choices 251 places 2020/21 1.93 per place 472 first choices 245 places 2021/22 1.43 per place 358 first choices 250 places 2022/23 1.45 per place 336 first choices 232 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 173 first choices 235 places 2024/25 0.66 per place 158 first choices 239 places 2025/26 0.41 per place 96 first choices 232 places 2026/27 0.29 per place 66 first choices 229 places
First preferences per place at Orion Eden Park. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 66 first preferences for 229 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Orion Eden Park, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 216 171 134 0.79
2019/20 251 301 181 1.2
2020/21 245 472 221 1.93
2021/22 250 358 200 1.43
2022/23 232 336 195 1.45
2023/24 235 173 150 0.74
2024/25 239 158 136 0.66
2025/26 232 96 96 0.41
2026/27 229 66 66 0.29

Places offered

229

in 2026/27

Named first choice

66

476 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

66 of 66

Offers to families outside the council

30%

48 of 160 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,161

96.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

39

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

480

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 Eden Park 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 Eden Park reported 39 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.8% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Orion Eden Park from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,200 places 165 on roll 2018/19 1,680 places 361 on roll 2020/21 1,680 places 849 on roll 2021/22 1,680 places 1,059 on roll 2022/23 1,680 places 1,190 on roll 2023/24 1,680 places 1,295 on roll 2024/25 1,680 places 1,264 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bromley

Postcode BR3 3RD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144465).

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.