School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dover Grammar School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 41 families who named Dover Grammar School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 140 and 178 put it first.

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

1.27

first choices for every place available

178 first preferences for 140 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dover Grammar School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Dover Grammar School for Girls, 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 Grammar School for Girls 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 Dover Grammar School for Girls, 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 1.22 per place 159 first choices 130 places 2016/17 1.33 per place 173 first choices 130 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 165 first choices 140 places 2018/19 1.29 per place 181 first choices 140 places 2019/20 1.39 per place 194 first choices 140 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 178 first choices 139 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 171 first choices 140 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 153 first choices 133 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 184 first choices 140 places 2024/25 1.19 per place 166 first choices 140 places 2025/26 1.29 per place 181 first choices 140 places 2026/27 1.27 per place 178 first choices 140 places
First preferences per place at Dover Grammar School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 178 first preferences for 140 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dover Grammar School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 130 159 130 1.22
2016/17 130 173 121 1.33
2017/18 140 165 135 1.18
2018/19 140 181 137 1.29
2019/20 140 194 136 1.39
2020/21 139 178 134 1.28
2021/22 140 171 127 1.22
2022/23 133 153 125 1.15
2023/24 140 184 138 1.31
2024/25 140 166 136 1.19
2025/26 140 181 134 1.29
2026/27 140 178 137 1.27

Places offered

140

in 2026/27

Named first choice

178

330 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77%

137 of 178

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 140 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

700

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

666

95.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

34

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

216

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 Grammar School for Girls 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 Grammar School for Girls reported 34 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.1% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Dover Grammar School for Girls 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 2009/10 782 places 779 on roll 2010/11 778 places 786 on roll 2011/12 810 places 817 on roll 2012/13 822 places 840 on roll 2013/14 803 places 829 on roll 2014/15 803 places 843 on roll 2015/16 803 places 856 on roll 2016/17 848 places 870 on roll 2017/18 848 places 875 on roll 2018/19 848 places 884 on roll 2020/21 852 places 909 on roll 2021/22 852 places 903 on roll 2022/23 852 places 874 on roll 2023/24 852 places 871 on roll 2024/25 916 places 864 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. Dover Grammar School for Girls has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Dover Grammar School for Girls. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
9 December 2019 No fault found ADA3580

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
Community school
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode CT16 2PZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 118806).

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.