School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Leigh Academy Tonbridge?

In 2026/27, Leigh Academy Tonbridge offered 179 places and 137 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.77

first choices for every place available

137 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Leigh Academy Tonbridge

There is no published appeal success rate for Leigh Academy Tonbridge, 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

Leigh Academy Tonbridge turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Leigh Academy Tonbridge, 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 0.56 per place 89 first choices 159 places 2016/17 0.82 per place 53 first choices 65 places 2017/18 0.53 per place 61 first choices 116 places 2018/19 0.37 per place 56 first choices 150 places 2019/20 0.36 per place 46 first choices 129 places 2020/21 0.4 per place 53 first choices 131 places 2021/22 0.34 per place 51 first choices 148 places 2022/23 0.47 per place 70 first choices 150 places 2023/24 0.78 per place 139 first choices 178 places 2024/25 1.23 per place 216 first choices 176 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 196 first choices 172 places 2026/27 0.77 per place 137 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Leigh Academy Tonbridge. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 137 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Leigh Academy Tonbridge, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 159 89 89 0.56
2016/17 65 53 53 0.82
2017/18 116 61 61 0.53
2018/19 150 56 56 0.37
2019/20 129 46 46 0.36
2020/21 131 53 53 0.4
2021/22 148 51 51 0.34
2022/23 150 70 70 0.47
2023/24 178 139 135 0.78
2024/25 176 216 164 1.23
2025/26 172 196 165 1.14
2026/27 179 137 137 0.77

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

137

637 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

137 of 137

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 179 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

756

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

634

83.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

122

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

130

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 Leigh Academy Tonbridge 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 Leigh Academy Tonbridge reported 122 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.9% 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 Leigh Academy Tonbridge from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 750 places 904 on roll 2011/12 886 places 864 on roll 2012/13 931 places 858 on roll 2013/14 930 places 823 on roll 2014/15 930 places 786 on roll 2015/16 930 places 753 on roll 2016/17 930 places 669 on roll 2017/18 1,057 places 577 on roll 2018/19 1,057 places 480 on roll 2020/21 1,057 places 442 on roll 2021/22 886 places 466 on roll 2022/23 886 places 488 on roll 2023/24 886 places 588 on roll 2024/25 886 places 712 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
Kent

Postcode TN9 2PH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136349).

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.