School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at President Kennedy School Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 191 families who named President Kennedy School Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 297 and 471 put it first.

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

1.59

first choices for every place available

471 first preferences for 297 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at President Kennedy School Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for President Kennedy School Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Coventry 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 Coventry, 21.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 224 of 1,056 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 Coventry.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Coventry 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

President Kennedy School Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at President Kennedy School Academy, 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 1.1 per place 297 first choices 271 places 2016/17 1.17 per place 316 first choices 269 places 2017/18 1.27 per place 337 first choices 265 places 2018/19 1.59 per place 430 first choices 271 places 2019/20 1.46 per place 436 first choices 299 places 2020/21 1.46 per place 479 first choices 327 places 2021/22 1.62 per place 483 first choices 299 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 386 first choices 300 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 408 first choices 296 places 2024/25 1.38 per place 415 first choices 300 places 2025/26 1.39 per place 418 first choices 300 places 2026/27 1.59 per place 471 first choices 297 places
First preferences per place at President Kennedy School Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 471 first preferences for 297 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at President Kennedy School Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 271 297 244 1.1
2016/17 269 316 251 1.17
2017/18 265 337 254 1.27
2018/19 271 430 257 1.59
2019/20 299 436 289 1.46
2020/21 327 479 317 1.46
2021/22 299 483 288 1.62
2022/23 300 386 284 1.29
2023/24 296 408 279 1.38
2024/25 300 415 272 1.38
2025/26 300 418 278 1.39
2026/27 297 471 280 1.59

Places offered

297

in 2026/27

Named first choice

471

933 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

59.4%

280 of 471

Offers to families outside the council

1%

4 of 297 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,544

102.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

44

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

288

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 President Kennedy School Academy 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 President Kennedy School Academy 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at President Kennedy School Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,597 places 1,223 on roll 2014/15 1,597 places 1,334 on roll 2015/16 1,597 places 1,391 on roll 2016/17 1,570 places 1,467 on roll 2017/18 1,553 places 1,525 on roll 2018/19 1,553 places 1,557 on roll 2020/21 1,553 places 1,716 on roll 2021/22 1,694 places 1,770 on roll 2022/23 1,694 places 1,786 on roll 2023/24 1,694 places 1,819 on roll 2024/25 1,788 places 1,831 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
Coventry

Postcode CV6 4GL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140248).

Other contested secondary schools in Coventry

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.