School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Beths Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 141 families who named Beths Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 191 and 191 put it first.

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

1

first choices for every place available

191 first preferences for 191 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Beths Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Beths Grammar 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 Bexley 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 Bexley, 12.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 449 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 Bexley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bexley 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

Beths Grammar School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 11 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 Beths Grammar 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 0.97 per place 186 first choices 191 places 2016/17 1.15 per place 221 first choices 193 places 2017/18 0.78 per place 149 first choices 191 places 2018/19 0.86 per place 165 first choices 191 places 2019/20 0.57 per place 108 first choices 191 places 2020/21 0.47 per place 105 first choices 224 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 200 first choices 224 places 2022/23 0.54 per place 120 first choices 223 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 146 first choices 192 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 172 first choices 191 places 2025/26 0.88 per place 169 first choices 192 places 2026/27 1 per place 191 first choices 191 places
First preferences per place at Beths Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 191 first preferences for 191 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Beths Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 191 186 133 0.97
2016/17 193 221 130 1.15
2017/18 191 149 98 0.78
2018/19 191 165 112 0.86
2019/20 191 108 86 0.57
2020/21 224 105 76 0.47
2021/22 224 200 70 0.89
2022/23 223 120 75 0.54
2023/24 192 146 86 0.76
2024/25 191 172 62 0.9
2025/26 192 169 60 0.88
2026/27 191 191 50 1

Places offered

191

in 2026/27

Named first choice

191

1,021 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

26.2%

50 of 191

Offers to families outside the council

70%

134 of 191 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

1,040

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

958

92.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

82

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

700

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 Beths Grammar 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 Beths Grammar School reported 82 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.1% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Beths Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,220 places 1,192 on roll 2011/12 1,220 places 1,221 on roll 2012/13 1,220 places 1,239 on roll 2013/14 1,380 places 1,277 on roll 2014/15 1,380 places 1,328 on roll 2015/16 1,380 places 1,322 on roll 2016/17 1,380 places 1,347 on roll 2017/18 1,380 places 1,408 on roll 2018/19 1,460 places 1,494 on roll 2020/21 1,460 places 1,676 on roll 2021/22 1,460 places 1,738 on roll 2022/23 1,782 places 1,735 on roll 2023/24 1,782 places 1,668 on roll 2024/25 1,740 places 1,663 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. Beths Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Beths Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 October 2020 Arrangements did not comply ADA3664

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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bexley

Postcode DA5 1NE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136334).

Other contested secondary schools in Bexley

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.