School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Thornden School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named Thornden School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 302 and 314 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

314 first preferences for 302 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Thornden School

There is no published appeal success rate for Thornden 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 Hampshire 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 Hampshire, 34.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 310 of 903 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 Hampshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hampshire 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

Thornden School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Thornden 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 1.18 per place 341 first choices 288 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 340 first choices 299 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 362 first choices 330 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 324 first choices 289 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 339 first choices 302 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 337 first choices 301 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 389 first choices 319 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 342 first choices 289 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 338 first choices 302 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 320 first choices 287 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 274 first choices 280 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 314 first choices 302 places
First preferences per place at Thornden School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 314 first preferences for 302 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Thornden School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 288 341 288 1.18
2016/17 299 340 296 1.14
2017/18 330 362 327 1.1
2018/19 289 324 284 1.12
2019/20 302 339 293 1.12
2020/21 301 337 292 1.12
2021/22 319 389 317 1.22
2022/23 289 342 288 1.18
2023/24 302 338 298 1.12
2024/25 287 320 281 1.11
2025/26 280 274 268 0.98
2026/27 302 314 295 1.04

Places offered

302

in 2026/27

Named first choice

314

620 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.9%

295 of 314

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 302 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

1,450

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,456

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

6

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 Thornden 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 Thornden School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Thornden School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,400 places 1,408 on roll 2011/12 1,400 places 1,413 on roll 2012/13 1,400 places 1,401 on roll 2013/14 1,400 places 1,402 on roll 2014/15 1,400 places 1,414 on roll 2015/16 1,400 places 1,417 on roll 2016/17 1,400 places 1,428 on roll 2017/18 1,450 places 1,468 on roll 2018/19 1,450 places 1,476 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,474 on roll 2021/22 1,450 places 1,493 on roll 2022/23 1,450 places 1,464 on roll 2023/24 1,450 places 1,455 on roll 2024/25 1,450 places 1,456 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. Thornden School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Thornden School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
12 September 2023 Arrangements did not comply ADA4117

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

Postcode SO53 2DW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136715).

Other contested secondary schools in Hampshire

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.