School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dartford Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 420 families who named Dartford Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 179 and 569 put it first.

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

3.18

first choices for every place available

569 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dartford Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Dartford 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

Dartford 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 Dartford Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.83 per place 328 first choices 179 places 2016/17 2.18 per place 393 first choices 180 places 2017/18 2.65 per place 474 first choices 179 places 2018/19 2.82 per place 508 first choices 180 places 2019/20 2.97 per place 523 first choices 176 places 2020/21 3.37 per place 607 first choices 180 places 2021/22 3.49 per place 625 first choices 179 places 2022/23 3.62 per place 648 first choices 179 places 2023/24 3.11 per place 551 first choices 177 places 2024/25 3.47 per place 617 first choices 178 places 2025/26 2.88 per place 510 first choices 177 places 2026/27 3.18 per place 569 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Dartford Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 569 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dartford 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
2015/16 179 328 163 1.83
2016/17 180 393 129 2.18
2017/18 179 474 156 2.65
2018/19 180 508 147 2.82
2019/20 176 523 140 2.97
2020/21 180 607 142 3.37
2021/22 179 625 133 3.49
2022/23 179 648 147 3.62
2023/24 177 551 136 3.11
2024/25 178 617 134 3.47
2025/26 177 510 139 2.88
2026/27 179 569 149 3.18

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

569

1,574 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

26.2%

149 of 569

Offers to families outside the council

26%

47 of 179 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

950

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

913

96.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

37

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

680

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 Dartford 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 Dartford Grammar School reported 37 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.1% 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 Dartford Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,205 places 1,201 on roll 2011/12 1,309 places 1,256 on roll 2012/13 1,300 places 1,305 on roll 2013/14 1,300 places 1,311 on roll 2014/15 1,300 places 1,304 on roll 2015/16 1,300 places 1,332 on roll 2016/17 1,300 places 1,415 on roll 2017/18 1,490 places 1,482 on roll 2018/19 1,490 places 1,468 on roll 2020/21 1,550 places 1,544 on roll 2021/22 1,550 places 1,531 on roll 2022/23 1,550 places 1,514 on roll 2023/24 1,550 places 1,537 on roll 2024/25 1,630 places 1,540 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 DA1 2HW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136359).

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.