School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wye School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Wye School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 131 and 132 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

132 first preferences for 131 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wye School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wye 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

Wye 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 Wye 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 1.69 per place 149 first choices 88 places 2016/17 1.49 per place 130 first choices 87 places 2017/18 1.66 per place 146 first choices 88 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 90 first choices 89 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 143 first choices 127 places 2020/21 1.76 per place 158 first choices 90 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 101 first choices 90 places 2022/23 1.44 per place 134 first choices 93 places 2023/24 1.34 per place 165 first choices 123 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 114 first choices 116 places 2025/26 0.8 per place 94 first choices 117 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 132 first choices 131 places
First preferences per place at Wye School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 132 first preferences for 131 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wye 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 88 149 75 1.69
2016/17 87 130 79 1.49
2017/18 88 146 82 1.66
2018/19 89 90 76 1.01
2019/20 127 143 102 1.13
2020/21 90 158 77 1.76
2021/22 90 101 57 1.12
2022/23 93 134 80 1.44
2023/24 123 165 103 1.34
2024/25 116 114 98 0.98
2025/26 117 94 88 0.8
2026/27 131 132 96 1.01

Places offered

131

in 2026/27

Named first choice

132

595 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.7%

96 of 132

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 131 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

450

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

538

119.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

88

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

150

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 Wye 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 Wye 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 Wye School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 600 places 91 on roll 2014/15 600 places 180 on roll 2015/16 600 places 270 on roll 2016/17 600 places 353 on roll 2017/18 600 places 449 on roll 2018/19 600 places 491 on roll 2020/21 600 places 570 on roll 2021/22 600 places 555 on roll 2022/23 600 places 571 on roll 2023/24 600 places 596 on roll 2024/25 600 places 577 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 TN25 5EJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139664).

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.