School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chilton Trinity School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 35 families who named Chilton Trinity School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 198 and 227 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

227 first preferences for 198 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chilton Trinity School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chilton Trinity 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 Somerset 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 Somerset, 14.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 50 of 348 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 Somerset.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Somerset 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

Chilton Trinity School turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Chilton Trinity 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 0.98 per place 185 first choices 188 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 148 first choices 155 places 2017/18 0.88 per place 158 first choices 180 places 2018/19 0.87 per place 173 first choices 199 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 164 first choices 166 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 163 first choices 180 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 134 first choices 168 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 175 first choices 182 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 172 first choices 195 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 185 first choices 192 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 198 first choices 192 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 227 first choices 198 places
First preferences per place at Chilton Trinity School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 227 first preferences for 198 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chilton Trinity School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 188 185 185 0.98
2016/17 155 148 148 0.95
2017/18 180 158 158 0.88
2018/19 199 173 173 0.87
2019/20 166 164 163 0.99
2020/21 180 163 163 0.91
2021/22 168 134 134 0.8
2022/23 182 175 175 0.96
2023/24 195 172 172 0.88
2024/25 192 185 185 0.96
2025/26 192 198 186 1.03
2026/27 198 227 192 1.15

Places offered

198

in 2026/27

Named first choice

227

372 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.6%

192 of 227

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 198 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 123881.

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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

974

81.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

226

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 Chilton Trinity 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 Chilton Trinity School reported 226 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 81.2% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chilton Trinity School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,000 places 948 on roll 2010/11 1,000 places 935 on roll 2011/12 1,000 places 935 on roll 2012/13 1,000 places 974 on roll 2013/14 935 places 926 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 937 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 945 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 913 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 902 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 940 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 912 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 925 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 942 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 962 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 974 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Somerset

Postcode TA6 3JA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145677).

Other contested secondary schools in Somerset

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.