School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Tiffin School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 294 families who named Tiffin School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 195 and 479 put it first.

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

2.46

first choices for every place available

479 first preferences for 195 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Tiffin School

There is no published appeal success rate for Tiffin 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 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

Tiffin School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Tiffin School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.6 3.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.45 per place 436 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1.69 per place 304 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.89 per place 340 first choices 180 places 2018/19 1.98 per place 357 first choices 180 places 2019/20 1.99 per place 371 first choices 186 places 2020/21 2.13 per place 397 first choices 186 places 2021/22 3.08 per place 573 first choices 186 places 2022/23 2.44 per place 454 first choices 186 places 2023/24 2.46 per place 473 first choices 192 places 2024/25 2.34 per place 445 first choices 190 places 2025/26 2.48 per place 477 first choices 192 places 2026/27 2.46 per place 479 first choices 195 places
First preferences per place at Tiffin School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 479 first preferences for 195 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Tiffin School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 436 174 2.45
2016/17 180 304 162 1.69
2017/18 180 340 166 1.89
2018/19 180 357 160 1.98
2019/20 186 371 177 1.99
2020/21 186 397 171 2.13
2021/22 186 573 169 3.08
2022/23 186 454 174 2.44
2023/24 192 473 175 2.46
2024/25 190 445 160 2.34
2025/26 192 477 170 2.48
2026/27 195 479 185 2.46

Places offered

195

in 2026/27

Named first choice

479

784 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

38.6%

185 of 479

Offers to families outside the council

67%

130 of 195 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

915

101.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

15

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

500

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 Tiffin 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 Tiffin 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Tiffin School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,048 places 1,075 on roll 2012/13 1,048 places 1,078 on roll 2013/14 1,048 places 1,091 on roll 2014/15 1,110 places 1,109 on roll 2015/16 1,294 places 1,156 on roll 2016/17 1,294 places 1,182 on roll 2017/18 1,230 places 1,213 on roll 2018/19 1,230 places 1,260 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,388 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,418 on roll 2022/23 1,400 places 1,418 on roll 2023/24 1,400 places 1,442 on roll 2024/25 1,400 places 1,461 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Tiffin School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Tiffin School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
12 September 2014 No fault found ADA2746

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kingston upon Thames

Postcode KT2 6RL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136910).

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.