School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Trinity School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 109 families who named Trinity School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 173 and 252 put it first.

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

1.46

first choices for every place available

252 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Trinity School

There is no published appeal success rate for Trinity 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

Trinity School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 1 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 Trinity 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 1.55 per place 184 first choices 119 places 2016/17 1.32 per place 156 first choices 118 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 176 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.33 per place 233 first choices 175 places 2019/20 1.45 per place 257 first choices 177 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 201 first choices 177 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 154 first choices 177 places 2022/23 1.14 per place 199 first choices 175 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 217 first choices 178 places 2024/25 1.23 per place 209 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.38 per place 238 first choices 173 places 2026/27 1.46 per place 252 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at Trinity School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 252 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Trinity School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 119 184 102 1.55
2016/17 118 156 104 1.32
2017/18 179 176 160 0.98
2018/19 175 233 152 1.33
2019/20 177 257 152 1.45
2020/21 177 201 145 1.14
2021/22 177 154 118 0.87
2022/23 175 199 155 1.14
2023/24 178 217 167 1.22
2024/25 170 209 142 1.23
2025/26 173 238 149 1.38
2026/27 173 252 143 1.46

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

252

792 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

56.7%

143 of 252

Offers to families outside the council

12%

21 of 173 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

903

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

224

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 Trinity 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 Trinity School 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Trinity 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 2013/14 790 places 107 on roll 2014/15 790 places 237 on roll 2015/16 790 places 347 on roll 2016/17 790 places 475 on roll 2017/18 790 places 652 on roll 2018/19 790 places 784 on roll 2020/21 1,090 places 986 on roll 2021/22 1,090 places 1,055 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,115 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,139 on roll 2024/25 1,124 places 1,133 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode TN13 3SL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139554).

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.