School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Towers School and Sixth Form Centre?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 35 families who named Towers School and Sixth Form Centre as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 240 and 242 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

242 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Towers School and Sixth Form Centre

There is no published appeal success rate for Towers School and Sixth Form Centre, 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

Towers School and Sixth Form Centre 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 Towers School and Sixth Form Centre, 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 0.79 per place 129 first choices 164 places 2016/17 0.73 per place 127 first choices 175 places 2017/18 0.79 per place 162 first choices 205 places 2018/19 0.87 per place 211 first choices 242 places 2019/20 0.84 per place 223 first choices 267 places 2020/21 0.79 per place 221 first choices 278 places 2021/22 0.75 per place 213 first choices 285 places 2022/23 0.78 per place 208 first choices 268 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 253 first choices 287 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 244 first choices 259 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 247 first choices 238 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 242 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at Towers School and Sixth Form Centre. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 242 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Towers School and Sixth Form Centre, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 164 129 129 0.79
2016/17 175 127 127 0.73
2017/18 205 162 162 0.79
2018/19 242 211 211 0.87
2019/20 267 223 223 0.84
2020/21 278 221 208 0.79
2021/22 285 213 209 0.75
2022/23 268 208 196 0.78
2023/24 287 253 233 0.88
2024/25 259 244 221 0.94
2025/26 238 247 207 1.04
2026/27 240 242 207 1.01

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

242

838 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.5%

207 of 242

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 240 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

1,224

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,319

107.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

95

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

440

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 Towers School and Sixth Form Centre 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 Towers School and Sixth Form Centre was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Towers School and Sixth Form Centre from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,606 places 1,492 on roll 2011/12 1,625 places 1,462 on roll 2012/13 1,565 places 1,337 on roll 2013/14 1,565 places 1,258 on roll 2014/15 1,565 places 1,157 on roll 2015/16 1,565 places 1,097 on roll 2016/17 1,565 places 1,035 on roll 2017/18 1,565 places 1,027 on roll 2018/19 1,565 places 1,070 on roll 2020/21 1,565 places 1,283 on roll 2021/22 1,625 places 1,380 on roll 2022/23 1,655 places 1,439 on roll 2023/24 1,790 places 1,506 on roll 2024/25 1,664 places 1,540 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 9AL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136583).

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.