School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dartford Science & Technology College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 50 families who named Dartford Science & Technology College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 148 and 172 put it first.

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

1.16

first choices for every place available

172 first preferences for 148 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dartford Science & Technology College

There is no published appeal success rate for Dartford Science & Technology 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

Dartford Science & Technology College turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Dartford Science & Technology 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 0.59 per place 85 first choices 145 places 2016/17 0.72 per place 97 first choices 135 places 2017/18 0.8 per place 120 first choices 150 places 2018/19 1.03 per place 155 first choices 150 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 169 first choices 149 places 2020/21 0.81 per place 122 first choices 150 places 2021/22 0.71 per place 107 first choices 150 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 148 first choices 145 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 112 first choices 148 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 177 first choices 147 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 185 first choices 144 places 2026/27 1.16 per place 172 first choices 148 places
First preferences per place at Dartford Science & Technology College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 172 first preferences for 148 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dartford Science & Technology College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 145 85 85 0.59
2016/17 135 97 97 0.72
2017/18 150 120 120 0.8
2018/19 150 155 132 1.03
2019/20 149 169 129 1.13
2020/21 150 122 117 0.81
2021/22 150 107 99 0.71
2022/23 145 148 125 1.02
2023/24 148 112 111 0.76
2024/25 147 177 124 1.2
2025/26 144 185 119 1.28
2026/27 148 172 122 1.16

Places offered

148

in 2026/27

Named first choice

172

580 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.9%

122 of 172

Offers to families outside the council

10%

15 of 148 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Dartford Science & Technology College published for 2025 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 Dartford Science & Technology College, 2025 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 Girls in Local Authority Care or Previously in Local Authority Care – 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). This also includes looked after girls who were previously in state care outside of England and were then adopted.
2 Current Family Association – a sister or brother (in Post 16) attending the school at the time of entry. In this context sister or brother means girls who live as sister or brother in the same house, including natural sisters or brothers, adopted siblings, step sisters/brothers and foster sisters/brothers.
3 Health and Special Access Reasons – medical, health 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 girls whose mental or physical impairment means they have a demonstrable and significant need to attend a particular school. Equally this priority will apply to girls whose parents’/guardians’ physical or mental health or social need means there is a demonstrable and significant need for their daughter 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

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 2025 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.

Dartford Science & Technology College's determined admission arrangements for 2025 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

735

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

15

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

181

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 Science & Technology 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 Dartford Science & Technology College reported 15 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Dartford Science & Technology College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 841 places 870 on roll 2010/11 860 places 853 on roll 2011/12 864 places 849 on roll 2012/13 864 places 771 on roll 2013/14 867 places 756 on roll 2014/15 841 places 734 on roll 2015/16 835 places 731 on roll 2016/17 746 places 719 on roll 2017/18 854 places 734 on roll 2018/19 848 places 734 on roll 2020/21 882 places 821 on roll 2021/22 882 places 854 on roll 2022/23 882 places 874 on roll 2023/24 872 places 873 on roll 2024/25 931 places 854 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode DA1 2LY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 118785).

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.