School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dane Court Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 66 families who named Dane Court Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 165 and 230 put it first.

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

1.39

first choices for every place available

230 first preferences for 165 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dane Court Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Dane Court 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

Dane Court 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 Dane Court 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 1.22 per place 201 first choices 165 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 182 first choices 164 places 2017/18 1.31 per place 216 first choices 165 places 2018/19 1.16 per place 203 first choices 175 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 217 first choices 165 places 2020/21 1.47 per place 240 first choices 163 places 2021/22 2.18 per place 355 first choices 163 places 2022/23 1.52 per place 249 first choices 164 places 2023/24 1.42 per place 235 first choices 165 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 223 first choices 165 places 2025/26 1.47 per place 240 first choices 163 places 2026/27 1.39 per place 230 first choices 165 places
First preferences per place at Dane Court Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 230 first preferences for 165 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dane Court 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
2015/16 165 201 163 1.22
2016/17 164 182 162 1.11
2017/18 165 216 165 1.31
2018/19 175 203 173 1.16
2019/20 165 217 165 1.32
2020/21 163 240 161 1.47
2021/22 163 355 158 2.18
2022/23 164 249 163 1.52
2023/24 165 235 164 1.42
2024/25 165 223 165 1.35
2025/26 163 240 160 1.47
2026/27 165 230 164 1.39

Places offered

165

in 2026/27

Named first choice

230

572 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.3%

164 of 230

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 165 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

932

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

865

92.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

67

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

330

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 Dane Court 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 Dane Court Grammar School reported 67 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.8% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Dane Court Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,147 places 1,192 on roll 2011/12 1,154 places 1,213 on roll 2012/13 1,154 places 1,175 on roll 2013/14 1,155 places 1,186 on roll 2014/15 1,205 places 1,235 on roll 2015/16 1,205 places 1,265 on roll 2016/17 1,205 places 1,275 on roll 2017/18 1,215 places 1,252 on roll 2018/19 1,215 places 1,245 on roll 2020/21 1,215 places 1,310 on roll 2021/22 1,215 places 1,298 on roll 2022/23 1,244 places 1,225 on roll 2023/24 1,244 places 1,250 on roll 2024/25 1,262 places 1,224 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. Dane Court Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Dane Court Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
9 October 2012 No fault found ADA2382

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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode CT10 2RT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136585).

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.