School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Thomas Aveling School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 59 families who named The Thomas Aveling School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 233 put it first.

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

1.14

first choices for every place available

233 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Thomas Aveling School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Thomas Aveling 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 Medway 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 Medway, 22.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 299 of 1,307 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 Medway.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Medway 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 Thomas Aveling 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 The Thomas Aveling 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 1.26 per place 236 first choices 188 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 206 first choices 189 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 226 first choices 193 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 233 first choices 187 places 2019/20 1.29 per place 238 first choices 184 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 243 first choices 214 places 2021/22 1.19 per place 257 first choices 216 places 2022/23 1.7 per place 318 first choices 187 places 2023/24 1.37 per place 257 first choices 187 places 2024/25 1.42 per place 263 first choices 185 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 275 first choices 212 places 2026/27 1.14 per place 233 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at The Thomas Aveling School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 233 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Thomas Aveling School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 188 236 175 1.26
2016/17 189 206 173 1.09
2017/18 193 226 168 1.17
2018/19 187 233 163 1.25
2019/20 184 238 166 1.29
2020/21 214 243 188 1.14
2021/22 216 257 186 1.19
2022/23 187 318 175 1.7
2023/24 187 257 170 1.37
2024/25 185 263 173 1.42
2025/26 212 275 196 1.3
2026/27 204 233 174 1.14

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

233

683 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.7%

174 of 233

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 204 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

1,192

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,007

84.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

185

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

183

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 Thomas Aveling 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 The Thomas Aveling School reported 185 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84.5% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Thomas Aveling School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,140 places 1,087 on roll 2012/13 1,140 places 1,082 on roll 2013/14 1,140 places 1,065 on roll 2014/15 1,140 places 1,092 on roll 2015/16 1,140 places 1,118 on roll 2016/17 1,140 places 1,113 on roll 2017/18 1,140 places 1,096 on roll 2018/19 1,140 places 1,116 on roll 2020/21 1,269 places 1,198 on roll 2021/22 1,269 places 1,200 on roll 2022/23 1,245 places 1,193 on roll 2023/24 1,245 places 1,227 on roll 2024/25 1,375 places 1,208 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. The Thomas Aveling School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Thomas Aveling School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
3 August 2020 Arrangements did not comply ADA3656

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
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Medway

Postcode ME1 2UW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137376).

Other contested secondary schools in Medway

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.