School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Borden Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named Borden Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 123 and 138 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

138 first preferences for 123 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Borden Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Borden 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 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

Borden Grammar School 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 Borden 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 1.32 per place 146 first choices 111 places 2016/17 1.27 per place 132 first choices 104 places 2017/18 1.24 per place 149 first choices 120 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 126 first choices 118 places 2019/20 1.15 per place 120 first choices 104 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 138 first choices 115 places 2021/22 1.73 per place 190 first choices 110 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 132 first choices 126 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 166 first choices 148 places 2024/25 1.26 per place 187 first choices 149 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 139 first choices 126 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 138 first choices 123 places
First preferences per place at Borden Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 138 first preferences for 123 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Borden 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
2015/16 111 146 105 1.32
2016/17 104 132 99 1.27
2017/18 120 149 116 1.24
2018/19 118 126 102 1.07
2019/20 104 120 94 1.15
2020/21 115 138 103 1.2
2021/22 110 190 89 1.73
2022/23 126 132 109 1.05
2023/24 148 166 137 1.12
2024/25 149 187 140 1.26
2025/26 126 139 111 1.1
2026/27 123 138 114 1.12

Places offered

123

in 2026/27

Named first choice

138

346 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.6%

114 of 138

Offers to families outside the council

2%

2 of 121 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

720

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

711

98.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

9

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

240

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 Borden 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 Borden Grammar School reported 9 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.8% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Borden Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 802 places 771 on roll 2012/13 850 places 766 on roll 2013/14 850 places 794 on roll 2014/15 850 places 786 on roll 2015/16 850 places 822 on roll 2016/17 850 places 844 on roll 2017/18 850 places 836 on roll 2018/19 850 places 836 on roll 2020/21 850 places 825 on roll 2021/22 850 places 859 on roll 2022/23 910 places 892 on roll 2023/24 940 places 925 on roll 2024/25 960 places 929 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode ME10 4DB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137800).

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.