School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Skinners' School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 127 families who named The Skinners' School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 160 and 232 put it first.

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

1.45

first choices for every place available

232 first preferences for 160 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Skinners' School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Skinners' 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 Skinners' 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 Skinners' School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.67 per place 251 first choices 150 places 2016/17 1.62 per place 241 first choices 149 places 2017/18 1.77 per place 275 first choices 155 places 2018/19 1.3 per place 195 first choices 150 places 2019/20 1.55 per place 248 first choices 160 places 2020/21 1.89 per place 298 first choices 158 places 2021/22 2.06 per place 329 first choices 160 places 2022/23 1.51 per place 242 first choices 160 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 200 first choices 159 places 2024/25 1.52 per place 243 first choices 160 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 208 first choices 160 places 2026/27 1.45 per place 232 first choices 160 places
First preferences per place at The Skinners' School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 232 first preferences for 160 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Skinners' School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 150 251 133 1.67
2016/17 149 241 119 1.62
2017/18 155 275 125 1.77
2018/19 150 195 110 1.3
2019/20 160 248 112 1.55
2020/21 158 298 138 1.89
2021/22 160 329 135 2.06
2022/23 160 242 141 1.51
2023/24 159 200 111 1.26
2024/25 160 243 128 1.52
2025/26 160 208 138 1.3
2026/27 160 232 105 1.45

Places offered

160

in 2026/27

Named first choice

232

887 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

45.3%

105 of 232

Offers to families outside the council

8%

13 of 160 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

841

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

809

96.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

32

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Skinners' 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 Skinners' School reported 32 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.2% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Skinners' School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 901 places 876 on roll 2014/15 901 places 901 on roll 2015/16 901 places 942 on roll 2016/17 901 places 973 on roll 2017/18 990 places 1,018 on roll 2018/19 990 places 1,068 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,114 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,116 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,117 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,119 on roll 2024/25 1,141 places 1,141 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. The Skinners' School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Skinners' School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 September 2018 No fault found ADA3466

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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode TN4 9PG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140595).

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.