School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bennett Memorial Diocesan School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 114 families who named Bennett Memorial Diocesan School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 293 and 384 put it first.

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

1.31

first choices for every place available

384 first preferences for 293 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bennett Memorial Diocesan School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bennett Memorial Diocesan 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 Kent 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 Kent, 27.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 1,757 of 6,368 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 Kent.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kent 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

Bennett Memorial Diocesan School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 1 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 Bennett Memorial Diocesan 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 1.18 per place 261 first choices 221 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 249 first choices 269 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 290 first choices 270 places 2018/19 1.06 per place 283 first choices 268 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 348 first choices 299 places 2020/21 1.17 per place 338 first choices 289 places 2021/22 1.03 per place 306 first choices 297 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 327 first choices 295 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 349 first choices 287 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 282 first choices 292 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 321 first choices 293 places 2026/27 1.31 per place 384 first choices 293 places
First preferences per place at Bennett Memorial Diocesan School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 384 first preferences for 293 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bennett Memorial Diocesan School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 221 261 198 1.18
2016/17 269 249 229 0.93
2017/18 270 290 239 1.07
2018/19 268 283 234 1.06
2019/20 299 348 273 1.16
2020/21 289 338 254 1.17
2021/22 297 306 226 1.03
2022/23 295 327 262 1.11
2023/24 287 349 252 1.22
2024/25 292 282 249 0.97
2025/26 293 321 261 1.1
2026/27 293 384 270 1.31

Places offered

293

in 2026/27

Named first choice

384

1,134 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.3%

270 of 384

Offers to families outside the council

12%

36 of 293 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

1,498

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

2

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

458

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 Bennett Memorial Diocesan 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 Bennett Memorial Diocesan School reported 2 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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 Bennett Memorial Diocesan School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,350 places 1,460 on roll 2011/12 1,452 places 1,480 on roll 2012/13 1,690 places 1,490 on roll 2013/14 1,690 places 1,527 on roll 2014/15 1,690 places 1,487 on roll 2015/16 1,690 places 1,482 on roll 2016/17 1,690 places 1,488 on roll 2017/18 1,600 places 1,545 on roll 2018/19 1,600 places 1,629 on roll 2020/21 1,600 places 1,742 on roll 2021/22 1,850 places 1,789 on roll 2022/23 1,950 places 1,855 on roll 2023/24 1,950 places 1,885 on roll 2024/25 1,958 places 1,886 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. Bennett Memorial Diocesan School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Bennett Memorial Diocesan School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
3 December 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2819

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
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode TN4 9SH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136603).

Other contested secondary schools in Kent

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.