School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Turner Free School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 26 families who named Turner Free School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 168 and 174 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Kent actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1.04

first choices for every place available

174 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Turner Free School

There is no published appeal success rate for Turner Free 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

Turner Free School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 8 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 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 Turner Free School, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.83 per place 149 first choices 179 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 174 first choices 175 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 140 first choices 177 places 2022/23 1.33 per place 228 first choices 171 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 185 first choices 169 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 184 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 192 first choices 170 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 174 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Turner Free School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 174 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Turner Free School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 179 149 148 0.83
2020/21 175 174 146 0.99
2021/22 177 140 104 0.79
2022/23 171 228 153 1.33
2023/24 169 185 145 1.09
2024/25 170 184 144 1.08
2025/26 170 192 155 1.13
2026/27 168 174 148 1.04

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

174

587 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.1%

148 of 174

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 168 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

870

96.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

30

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

360

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 Turner Free 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 Turner Free School reported 30 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.7% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Turner Free School from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,260 places 117 on roll 2020/21 1,260 places 478 on roll 2021/22 1,260 places 656 on roll 2022/23 1,260 places 822 on roll 2023/24 1,260 places 956 on roll 2024/25 1,260 places 1,021 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode CT19 4PB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145923).

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.