School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dover Christ Church Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Dover Christ Church Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 131 and 137 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

137 first preferences for 131 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dover Christ Church Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Dover Christ Church Academy, 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

Dover Christ Church Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Dover Christ Church Academy, 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 0.85 per place 99 first choices 116 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 104 first choices 116 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 167 first choices 146 places 2018/19 0.83 per place 116 first choices 140 places 2019/20 0.86 per place 119 first choices 139 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 147 first choices 168 places 2021/22 0.88 per place 126 first choices 144 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 127 first choices 131 places 2023/24 0.82 per place 117 first choices 143 places 2024/25 0.78 per place 100 first choices 128 places 2025/26 0.88 per place 112 first choices 128 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 137 first choices 131 places
First preferences per place at Dover Christ Church Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 137 first preferences for 131 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dover Christ Church Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 116 99 99 0.85
2016/17 116 104 104 0.9
2017/18 146 167 130 1.14
2018/19 140 116 116 0.83
2019/20 139 119 119 0.86
2020/21 168 147 143 0.88
2021/22 144 126 120 0.88
2022/23 131 127 123 0.97
2023/24 143 117 117 0.82
2024/25 128 100 100 0.78
2025/26 128 112 107 0.88
2026/27 131 137 117 1.05

Places offered

131

in 2026/27

Named first choice

137

349 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.4%

117 of 137

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 131 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 136175.

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

709

94.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

41

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Dover Christ Church Academy 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 Dover Christ Church Academy reported 41 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.5% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Dover Christ Church Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 950 places 844 on roll 2011/12 990 places 742 on roll 2012/13 990 places 671 on roll 2013/14 990 places 639 on roll 2014/15 990 places 634 on roll 2015/16 990 places 645 on roll 2016/17 990 places 684 on roll 2017/18 990 places 736 on roll 2018/19 990 places 763 on roll 2020/21 990 places 828 on roll 2021/22 950 places 835 on roll 2022/23 950 places 807 on roll 2023/24 950 places 782 on roll 2024/25 950 places 730 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode CT16 2EG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150278).

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.