School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cranbrook School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 57 families who named Cranbrook School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 88 and 143 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Kent actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

1.62

first choices for every place available

143 first preferences for 88 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cranbrook School

There is no published appeal success rate for Cranbrook 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

Cranbrook School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 10 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 Cranbrook School, 2017/18 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 1.73 per place 52 first choices 30 places 2018/19 1.58 per place 93 first choices 59 places 2019/20 1.53 per place 92 first choices 60 places 2020/21 1.62 per place 94 first choices 58 places 2021/22 2.75 per place 157 first choices 57 places 2022/23 2 per place 118 first choices 59 places 2023/24 1.63 per place 147 first choices 90 places 2024/25 1.48 per place 133 first choices 90 places 2025/26 1.57 per place 140 first choices 89 places 2026/27 1.62 per place 143 first choices 88 places
First preferences per place at Cranbrook School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 143 first preferences for 88 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cranbrook School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 30 52 28 1.73
2018/19 59 93 58 1.58
2019/20 60 92 55 1.53
2020/21 58 94 48 1.62
2021/22 57 157 55 2.75
2022/23 59 118 55 2
2023/24 90 147 86 1.63
2024/25 90 133 87 1.48
2025/26 89 140 87 1.57
2026/27 88 143 86 1.62

Places offered

88

in 2026/27

Named first choice

143

281 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

60.1%

86 of 143

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 88 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

828

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

617

74.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

211

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

324

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 Cranbrook 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 Cranbrook School reported 211 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 74.5% 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 Cranbrook School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 766 places 779 on roll 2012/13 766 places 757 on roll 2013/14 770 places 754 on roll 2014/15 770 places 740 on roll 2015/16 770 places 740 on roll 2016/17 770 places 735 on roll 2017/18 840 places 746 on roll 2018/19 960 places 840 on roll 2020/21 966 places 874 on roll 2021/22 966 places 876 on roll 2022/23 966 places 882 on roll 2023/24 966 places 915 on roll 2024/25 1,152 places 922 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. Cranbrook School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Cranbrook School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
18 December 2024 Arrangements did not comply REF4355 to REF4379

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
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode TN17 3JD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137739).

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.