Refused a place at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School?
You are not alone. In 2026/27, 180 families who named Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 211 and 341 put it first.
Below: what an appeal in Bexley actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.
first choices for every place available
341 first preferences for 211 places, 2026/27
Appealing a refusal at Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School
There is no published appeal success rate for Chislehurst and Sidcup 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.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
How contested this school has been
Chislehurst and Sidcup 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 10 of those years. In the other 2 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.
View as a table
| Year | Places | First choices | Offered | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 | 192 | 252 | 165 | 1.31 |
| 2016/17 | 192 | 230 | 132 | 1.2 |
| 2017/18 | 190 | 195 | 138 | 1.03 |
| 2018/19 | 197 | 241 | 161 | 1.22 |
| 2019/20 | 207 | 180 | 142 | 0.87 |
| 2020/21 | 212 | 207 | 131 | 0.98 |
| 2021/22 | 212 | 426 | 147 | 2.01 |
| 2022/23 | 192 | 247 | 132 | 1.29 |
| 2023/24 | 212 | 274 | 167 | 1.29 |
| 2024/25 | 211 | 241 | 139 | 1.14 |
| 2025/26 | 192 | 272 | 145 | 1.42 |
| 2026/27 | 211 | 341 | 161 | 1.62 |
Places offered
211
in 2026/27
Named first choice
341
1,426 named it at any preference
First choices offered a place
47.2%
161 of 341
Offers to families outside the council
60%
126 of 211 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
960
2024/25, whole school
Pupils in them
981
102.2% of capacity
Over its capacity by
21
reported as full or beyond
Sixth form places
550
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 Chislehurst and Sidcup 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 Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25
Places Pupils on roll
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. Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.
| Determined | Outcome | Determination |
|---|---|---|
| 12 October 2022 | Arrangements did not comply | ADA3935 |
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
- How close you had to live. Cut-off distances are set by whoever runs admissions for the school. Bexley does not publish them, and no council is required to — the regulations ask only for the admission number and the preferences received. Ask the admission authority directly — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
- How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
- Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.
About the school
- Type
- Academy converter
- Admissions policy
- Selective
- Religious character
- No religious character
- Entry point
- Year 7
- Council
- Bexley
Postcode DA15 9AG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137423).
Other contested secondary schools in Bexley
- Bexley Grammar School 1.61 first choices per place
- Harris Garrard Academy 1.28 first choices per place
- Beths Grammar School 1 first choices per place
- Leigh Academy Bexley 1 first choices per place
- Harris Academy Falconwood 0.96 first choices per place
- Haberdashers' Crayford Academy 0.93 first choices per place
- Cleeve Park School 0.91 first choices per place
- Townley Grammar School 0.77 first choices per place
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.