School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Turing House School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 147 families who named Turing House School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 153 and 257 put it first.

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

1.68

first choices for every place available

257 first preferences for 153 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Turing House School

There is no published appeal success rate for Turing House 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 Richmond 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 Richmond upon Thames, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 139 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 Richmond upon Thames.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Richmond 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

Turing House School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 11 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 5 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 Turing House School, 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 0.88 per place 86 first choices 98 places 2017/18 1.03 per place 99 first choices 96 places 2018/19 0.71 per place 86 first choices 121 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 136 first choices 121 places 2020/21 0.62 per place 93 first choices 149 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 139 first choices 148 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 139 first choices 157 places 2023/24 1.65 per place 263 first choices 159 places 2024/25 1.8 per place 282 first choices 157 places 2025/26 1.55 per place 246 first choices 159 places 2026/27 1.68 per place 257 first choices 153 places
First preferences per place at Turing House School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 257 first preferences for 153 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Turing House School, 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 98 86 42 0.88
2017/18 96 99 57 1.03
2018/19 121 86 59 0.71
2019/20 121 136 78 1.12
2020/21 149 93 70 0.62
2021/22 148 139 80 0.94
2022/23 157 139 90 0.89
2023/24 159 263 127 1.65
2024/25 157 282 120 1.8
2025/26 159 246 120 1.55
2026/27 153 257 110 1.68

Places offered

153

in 2026/27

Named first choice

257

1,164 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

42.8%

110 of 257

Offers to families outside the council

3%

4 of 153 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

825

110% of capacity

Over its capacity by

75

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Turing House 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 Turing House 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Turing House School from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,050 places 101 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 225 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 326 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 452 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 663 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 729 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 832 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 938 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,001 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. Turing House School has been the subject of 3 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Turing House School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
27 August 2024 No fault found ADA4300
27 August 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3875
7 June 2016 No fault found ADA3143

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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Richmond upon Thames

Postcode TW2 6LH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141963).

Other contested secondary schools in Richmond 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.