School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Kingston Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 155 families who named The Kingston Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 210 and 306 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Kingston upon Thames actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

1.46

first choices for every place available

306 first preferences for 210 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Kingston Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Kingston Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Kingston upon Thames 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 Kingston upon Thames, 16.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 18 of 111 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 Kingston upon Thames.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kingston upon Thames 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 Kingston Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 11 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 9 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 The Kingston Academy, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.75 per place 134 first choices 178 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 150 first choices 175 places 2018/19 1.37 per place 238 first choices 174 places 2019/20 1.81 per place 315 first choices 174 places 2020/21 1.42 per place 299 first choices 210 places 2021/22 1.16 per place 239 first choices 206 places 2022/23 1.68 per place 325 first choices 194 places 2023/24 1.41 per place 273 first choices 194 places 2024/25 1.33 per place 257 first choices 193 places 2025/26 1.39 per place 313 first choices 225 places 2026/27 1.46 per place 306 first choices 210 places
First preferences per place at The Kingston Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 306 first preferences for 210 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Kingston Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 178 134 117 0.75
2017/18 175 150 120 0.86
2018/19 174 238 148 1.37
2019/20 174 315 137 1.81
2020/21 210 299 167 1.42
2021/22 206 239 141 1.16
2022/23 194 325 163 1.68
2023/24 194 273 164 1.41
2024/25 193 257 151 1.33
2025/26 225 313 176 1.39
2026/27 210 306 151 1.46

Places offered

210

in 2026/27

Named first choice

306

1,344 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

49.3%

151 of 306

Offers to families outside the council

12%

25 of 210 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

918

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

977

106.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

59

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

288

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 Kingston Academy 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 Kingston Academy 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Kingston Academy from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,188 places 139 on roll 2016/17 1,188 places 324 on roll 2017/18 1,188 places 533 on roll 2018/19 1,188 places 723 on roll 2020/21 1,188 places 1,040 on roll 2021/22 1,188 places 1,170 on roll 2022/23 1,188 places 1,177 on roll 2023/24 1,188 places 1,168 on roll 2024/25 1,206 places 1,180 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
Kingston upon Thames

Postcode KT2 5PE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141862).

Other contested secondary schools in Kingston upon Thames

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.