School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Invicta Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 45 families who named Invicta Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 255 and 290 put it first.

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

1.14

first choices for every place available

290 first preferences for 255 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Invicta Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Invicta 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

Invicta 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 Invicta 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 1.31 per place 252 first choices 192 places 2016/17 1.13 per place 238 first choices 210 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 220 first choices 192 places 2018/19 1.1 per place 238 first choices 216 places 2019/20 1.08 per place 255 first choices 237 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 261 first choices 235 places 2021/22 1.56 per place 374 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 297 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 278 first choices 256 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 303 first choices 251 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 271 first choices 244 places 2026/27 1.14 per place 290 first choices 255 places
First preferences per place at Invicta Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 290 first preferences for 255 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Invicta 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
2015/16 192 252 189 1.31
2016/17 210 238 198 1.13
2017/18 192 220 179 1.15
2018/19 216 238 201 1.1
2019/20 237 255 214 1.08
2020/21 235 261 221 1.11
2021/22 240 374 231 1.56
2022/23 240 297 227 1.24
2023/24 256 278 225 1.09
2024/25 251 303 238 1.21
2025/26 244 271 229 1.11
2026/27 255 290 245 1.14

Places offered

255

in 2026/27

Named first choice

290

720 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.5%

245 of 290

Offers to families outside the council

11%

29 of 255 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

1,354

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,250

92.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

104

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

420

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 Invicta 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 Invicta Grammar School reported 104 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.3% 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 Invicta Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,178 places 1,136 on roll 2011/12 1,157 places 1,232 on roll 2012/13 1,219 places 1,217 on roll 2013/14 1,310 places 1,235 on roll 2014/15 1,310 places 1,268 on roll 2015/16 1,310 places 1,309 on roll 2016/17 1,310 places 1,370 on roll 2017/18 1,400 places 1,406 on roll 2018/19 1,400 places 1,470 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,572 on roll 2021/22 1,620 places 1,619 on roll 2022/23 1,620 places 1,640 on roll 2023/24 1,620 places 1,624 on roll 2024/25 1,774 places 1,635 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 ME14 5DS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136582).

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.