School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 16 families who named Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: 121 put it first and 105 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.

16

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

121 first preferences for 133 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chatham & Clarendon 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

Chatham & Clarendon 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.

First preferences per place at Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.24 per place 164 first choices 132 places 2016/17 1.06 per place 164 first choices 154 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 171 first choices 157 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 202 first choices 189 places 2019/20 1.1 per place 198 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.22 per place 218 first choices 178 places 2021/22 2.01 per place 328 first choices 163 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 186 first choices 178 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 172 first choices 158 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 200 first choices 171 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 105 first choices 115 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 121 first choices 133 places
First preferences per place at Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 121 first preferences for 133 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chatham & Clarendon 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
2015/16 132 164 125 1.24
2016/17 154 164 145 1.06
2017/18 157 171 142 1.09
2018/19 189 202 168 1.07
2019/20 180 198 154 1.1
2020/21 178 218 149 1.22
2021/22 163 328 159 2.01
2022/23 178 186 144 1.04
2023/24 158 172 133 1.09
2024/25 171 200 160 1.17
2025/26 115 105 82 0.91
2026/27 133 121 105 0.91

Places offered

133

in 2026/27

Named first choice

121

502 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.8%

105 of 121

Offers to families outside the council

3%

4 of 132 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

966

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

909

94.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

57

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

500

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 Chatham & Clarendon 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 Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School reported 57 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.1% 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 Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 871 places 851 on roll 2011/12 825 places 752 on roll 2012/13 700 places 725 on roll 2013/14 1,400 places 1,417 on roll 2014/15 1,400 places 1,356 on roll 2015/16 1,400 places 1,317 on roll 2016/17 1,400 places 1,382 on roll 2017/18 1,400 places 1,461 on roll 2018/19 1,400 places 1,447 on roll 2020/21 1,430 places 1,504 on roll 2021/22 1,430 places 1,507 on roll 2022/23 1,582 places 1,499 on roll 2023/24 1,582 places 1,428 on roll 2024/25 1,466 places 1,387 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 CT11 7PS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136382).

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.