School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Norton Knatchbull School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 66 families who named The Norton Knatchbull School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 192 and 225 put it first.

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

1.17

first choices for every place available

225 first preferences for 192 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Norton Knatchbull School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Norton Knatchbull 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 Norton Knatchbull School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Norton Knatchbull 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 1.36 per place 165 first choices 121 places 2016/17 1.22 per place 220 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 172 first choices 157 places 2018/19 1.2 per place 184 first choices 153 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 197 first choices 170 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 229 first choices 185 places 2021/22 1.47 per place 263 first choices 179 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 197 first choices 184 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 222 first choices 190 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 229 first choices 198 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 203 first choices 173 places 2026/27 1.17 per place 225 first choices 192 places
First preferences per place at The Norton Knatchbull School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 225 first preferences for 192 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Norton Knatchbull School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 121 165 111 1.36
2016/17 180 220 162 1.22
2017/18 157 172 125 1.1
2018/19 153 184 129 1.2
2019/20 170 197 158 1.16
2020/21 185 229 158 1.24
2021/22 179 263 146 1.47
2022/23 184 197 153 1.07
2023/24 190 222 163 1.17
2024/25 198 229 171 1.16
2025/26 173 203 153 1.17
2026/27 192 225 159 1.17

Places offered

192

in 2026/27

Named first choice

225

417 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.7%

159 of 225

Offers to families outside the council

5%

9 of 186 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria The Norton Knatchbull School published for 2025 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for The Norton Knatchbull School, 2025 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked-after children
2 Families with separated parents INTERSECTIONAL IMPACT Will this policy impact any groups more because of multiple/combined characteristics? What will the impact be, and why? For example, if you’re reviewing your: Family leave policy: if your rules or language around leave arrangement assumes that people having children are married, this could negatively impact unmarried women who are pregnant or have children Supporting pupils with medicines policy: if your response to allergies relies on pupils carrying and administering their own epi-pens, this could negatively impact younger pupils with allergies who are not able to do this Outcomes CONSULTATION AND STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT Record your […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Details of how the EIA outcome will be monitored
4 Evidence collected / data reviewed
5 Policy review schedule Any further consultation or stakeholder engagement Monitoring arrangements MONITORING ARRANGEMENTS DATE OF NEXT POLICY REVIEW

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2025 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

The Norton Knatchbull School's determined admission arrangements for 2025 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,027

97.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

23

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

292

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 Norton Knatchbull 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 Norton Knatchbull School reported 23 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.8% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Norton Knatchbull School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,116 places 1,074 on roll 2012/13 1,116 places 1,012 on roll 2013/14 1,120 places 1,045 on roll 2014/15 1,120 places 1,075 on roll 2015/16 1,120 places 1,106 on roll 2016/17 1,120 places 1,172 on roll 2017/18 1,230 places 1,170 on roll 2018/19 1,230 places 1,152 on roll 2020/21 1,380 places 1,233 on roll 2021/22 1,380 places 1,266 on roll 2022/23 1,380 places 1,253 on roll 2023/24 1,380 places 1,265 on roll 2024/25 1,342 places 1,287 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode TN24 0QJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138019).

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.