School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Highworth Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 67 families who named Highworth Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 214 and 267 put it first.

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

1.25

first choices for every place available

267 first preferences for 214 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Highworth Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Highworth 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

Highworth 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 Highworth Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 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 1.29 per place 248 first choices 192 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 222 first choices 179 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 190 first choices 160 places 2018/19 1.18 per place 246 first choices 208 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 232 first choices 189 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 252 first choices 204 places 2021/22 1.7 per place 358 first choices 210 places 2022/23 1.23 per place 238 first choices 194 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 251 first choices 207 places 2024/25 1.37 per place 288 first choices 210 places 2025/26 1.34 per place 253 first choices 189 places 2026/27 1.25 per place 267 first choices 214 places
First preferences per place at Highworth Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 267 first preferences for 214 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Highworth 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
2015/16 192 248 186 1.29
2016/17 179 222 170 1.24
2017/18 160 190 146 1.19
2018/19 208 246 200 1.18
2019/20 189 232 182 1.23
2020/21 204 252 193 1.24
2021/22 210 358 201 1.7
2022/23 194 238 183 1.23
2023/24 207 251 199 1.21
2024/25 210 288 207 1.37
2025/26 189 253 182 1.34
2026/27 214 267 200 1.25

Places offered

214

in 2026/27

Named first choice

267

446 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.9%

200 of 267

Offers to families outside the council

3%

7 of 213 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

1,075

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,092

101.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

17

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

470

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 Highworth 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 Highworth Grammar School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Highworth Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,227 places 1,241 on roll 2011/12 1,227 places 1,308 on roll 2012/13 1,320 places 1,302 on roll 2013/14 1,320 places 1,293 on roll 2014/15 1,320 places 1,304 on roll 2015/16 1,320 places 1,369 on roll 2016/17 1,320 places 1,407 on roll 2017/18 1,317 places 1,452 on roll 2018/19 1,317 places 1,487 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,516 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,519 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,541 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,534 on roll 2024/25 1,545 places 1,545 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 TN24 8UD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136379).

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.