although at least two schools, Highsted Grammar School in Sittingbourne and Chatham Grammar School for Girls, held their appeals in the Spring Term. The outcome of these appeals, together with the first re-allocation days for places not taken up, begins what I call the 'churning' process, as many children are offered new schools and turn down the one they have been offered, thus creating other spaces for children to take up.  I estimate this process will see some 1000 children out of the nearly 16,000 in the Kent cohort changing their schools for September. Each year I support several pairs of children in effect appealing for the other's school, but sadly for them, there is no mechanism to simply exchange offers! A high proportion of the changes eventually trickle through to the least popular schools, seeing their number of vacant spaces increase, sometimes dramatically and making their planning for September extremely difficult..