School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kents Hill Park all-through school?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Kents Hill Park all-through school as their first choice did not get a place: 56 put it first and 55 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

56 first preferences for 118 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kents Hill Park all-through school

There is no published appeal success rate for Kents Hill Park all-through 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 Milton Keynes 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 Milton Keynes, 11.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 62 of 532 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 Milton Keynes.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Milton Keynes 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

Kents Hill Park all-through school turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 8 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Kents Hill Park all-through 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 0.65 per place 98 first choices 150 places 2020/21 0.79 per place 117 first choices 149 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 119 first choices 150 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 109 first choices 119 places 2023/24 0.87 per place 104 first choices 119 places 2024/25 0.75 per place 88 first choices 118 places 2025/26 0.82 per place 97 first choices 119 places 2026/27 0.47 per place 56 first choices 118 places
First preferences per place at Kents Hill Park all-through school. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 56 first preferences for 118 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kents Hill Park all-through school, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 150 98 97 0.65
2020/21 149 117 98 0.79
2021/22 150 119 105 0.79
2022/23 119 109 88 0.92
2023/24 119 104 89 0.87
2024/25 118 88 79 0.75
2025/26 119 97 82 0.82
2026/27 118 56 55 0.47

Places offered

118

in 2026/27

Named first choice

56

450 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.2%

55 of 56

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 118 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

1,085

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,020

94% of capacity

Unfilled places

65

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Kents Hill Park all-through 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 Kents Hill Park all-through school reported 65 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94% 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 Kents Hill Park all-through school from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,080 places 149 on roll 2020/21 1,080 places 535 on roll 2021/22 1,080 places 747 on roll 2022/23 1,080 places 923 on roll 2023/24 1,080 places 992 on roll 2024/25 1,085 places 1,020 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
Milton Keynes

Postcode MK7 6BZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145063).

Other contested secondary schools in Milton Keynes

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.