School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The North School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named The North School as their first choice did not get a place: 197 put it first and 170 of them were offered one.

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

27

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

197 first preferences for 206 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The North School

There is no published appeal success rate for The North 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

The North School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 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 The North 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 0.75 per place 122 first choices 162 places 2016/17 0.73 per place 122 first choices 168 places 2017/18 0.79 per place 142 first choices 180 places 2018/19 0.76 per place 159 first choices 210 places 2019/20 0.87 per place 207 first choices 237 places 2020/21 0.62 per place 153 first choices 246 places 2021/22 0.63 per place 156 first choices 249 places 2022/23 1 per place 226 first choices 225 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 243 first choices 233 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 197 first choices 206 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 199 first choices 193 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 197 first choices 206 places
First preferences per place at The North School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 197 first preferences for 206 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The North School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 162 122 122 0.75
2016/17 168 122 122 0.73
2017/18 180 142 142 0.79
2018/19 210 159 159 0.76
2019/20 237 207 203 0.87
2020/21 246 153 153 0.62
2021/22 249 156 156 0.63
2022/23 225 226 186 1
2023/24 233 243 196 1.04
2024/25 206 197 172 0.96
2025/26 193 199 174 1.03
2026/27 206 197 170 0.96

Places offered

206

in 2026/27

Named first choice

197

696 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.3%

170 of 197

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 206 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 118832.

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

1,378

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,136

82.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

242

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

275

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 The North 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 The North School reported 242 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 82.4% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The North School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,043 places 1,041 on roll 2010/11 1,159 places 1,123 on roll 2011/12 1,135 places 1,182 on roll 2012/13 1,195 places 1,224 on roll 2013/14 1,233 places 1,243 on roll 2014/15 1,233 places 1,177 on roll 2015/16 1,242 places 1,104 on roll 2016/17 1,273 places 1,061 on roll 2017/18 1,251 places 1,034 on roll 2018/19 1,236 places 1,019 on roll 2020/21 1,265 places 1,155 on roll 2021/22 1,265 places 1,217 on roll 2022/23 1,265 places 1,257 on roll 2023/24 1,265 places 1,299 on roll 2024/25 1,653 places 1,258 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 TN24 8AL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148712).

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.