School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chilmington Green School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 39 families who named Chilmington Green School as their first choice did not get a place: 164 put it first and 125 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Kent actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 3 years of official figures.

39

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

164 first preferences for 184 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chilmington Green School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chilmington Green 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 Kent 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 Kent, 27.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 1,757 of 6,368 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 Kent.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kent 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

Chilmington Green School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 3 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 2 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 Chilmington Green School, 2024/25 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 24/25 25/26 26/27 2024/25 1.06 per place 155 first choices 146 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 163 first choices 169 places 2026/27 0.89 per place 164 first choices 184 places
First preferences per place at Chilmington Green School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 164 first preferences for 184 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chilmington Green School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2024/25 146 155 122 1.06
2025/26 169 163 133 0.96
2026/27 184 164 125 0.89

Places offered

184

in 2026/27

Named first choice

164

711 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.2%

125 of 164

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 184 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

270

30% of capacity

Unfilled places

630

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

240

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 Chilmington Green 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 Chilmington Green School reported 630 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 30% 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.

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
Kent

Postcode TN23 3DL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149840).

Other contested secondary schools in Kent

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.