School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Brockhill Park Performing Arts College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Brockhill Park Performing Arts College as their first choice did not get a place: 213 put it first and 193 of them were offered one.

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

20

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

213 first preferences for 230 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Brockhill Park Performing Arts College

There is no published appeal success rate for Brockhill Park Performing Arts College, 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

Brockhill Park Performing Arts College turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 3 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 Brockhill Park Performing Arts College, 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 per place 234 first choices 235 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 278 first choices 251 places 2017/18 1.06 per place 305 first choices 287 places 2018/19 1.46 per place 340 first choices 233 places 2019/20 1.08 per place 275 first choices 255 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 275 first choices 254 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 212 first choices 233 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 240 first choices 230 places 2023/24 1 per place 233 first choices 233 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 247 first choices 234 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 205 first choices 225 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 213 first choices 230 places
First preferences per place at Brockhill Park Performing Arts College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 213 first preferences for 230 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Brockhill Park Performing Arts College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 235 234 183 1
2016/17 251 278 216 1.11
2017/18 287 305 253 1.06
2018/19 233 340 206 1.46
2019/20 255 275 225 1.08
2020/21 254 275 221 1.08
2021/22 233 212 165 0.91
2022/23 230 240 188 1.04
2023/24 233 233 195 1
2024/25 234 247 198 1.06
2025/26 225 205 191 0.91
2026/27 230 213 193 0.93

Places offered

230

in 2026/27

Named first choice

213

688 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.6%

193 of 213

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 230 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Brockhill Park Performing Arts College published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Brockhill Park Performing Arts College, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after Children, Previously Looked after Children and Internationally Adopted Previously Looked after Children. – a 'looked after child' or a child who was previously looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangements, or special guardianship order. A looked after child is a child who is (a) in the care of a local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions (see the definition in Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989).
2 Sibling / Current Family association - a child with a brother or sister already attending the school when the child is due to start. In this context brother or sister means children who live as brother or sister in the same house, including natural brothers and sisters, adopted siblings, stepbrothers or sisters and foster brothers and sisters.
3 Medical/Health and Special Access Reasons – medical, health, social and special access reasons will be applied in accordance with the school’s legal obligations, in particular those under the Equality Act 2010. Priority will be given to those children whose health or physical impairment means they have a demonstrable and significant need to attend a particular school. Equally this priority will apply to children whose parents’/guardians’ physical or mental health or social needs mean that they have a demonstrable and significant need to attend a particular school. […] criterion continues in the source document
4 Nearness of children's homes to school - we use the distance between the child’s permanent home address (defined in KCC’s annual admissions prospectus) and the school, measured in a straight line using the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) address point. Distances are measured from a point defined as within the child’s home to a point defined as within the school as specified by NLPG. The same address point on the school site is used for everybody. When we apply the distance criterion for the school, these straight-line measurements are used to determine how close each applicant’s address is to the school. […] criterion continues in the source document
5 Availability of a suitable course.
6 For admission, 9 - 4 grades in 5 subjects are normally required.
7 Some courses of study have particular subject requirements. (see prospectus) The oversubscription criteria for the Sixth Form is the same as for Year 7.

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Brockhill Park Performing Arts College's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,175

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,177

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

179

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 Brockhill Park Performing Arts College 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 Brockhill Park Performing Arts College 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

Places and pupils on roll at Brockhill Park Performing Arts College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,384 places 1,217 on roll 2012/13 1,405 places 1,251 on roll 2013/14 1,405 places 1,282 on roll 2014/15 1,405 places 1,285 on roll 2015/16 1,405 places 1,294 on roll 2016/17 1,405 places 1,323 on roll 2017/18 1,405 places 1,358 on roll 2018/19 1,405 places 1,368 on roll 2020/21 1,405 places 1,380 on roll 2021/22 1,384 places 1,350 on roll 2022/23 1,405 places 1,341 on roll 2023/24 1,405 places 1,344 on roll 2024/25 1,354 places 1,345 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
Kent

Postcode CT21 4HL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137458).

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.