School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Maidstone Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named Maidstone Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 205 and 235 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

235 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Maidstone Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Maidstone 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

Maidstone 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 Maidstone 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 1.38 per place 242 first choices 175 places 2016/17 1.32 per place 231 first choices 175 places 2017/18 1.03 per place 212 first choices 205 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 231 first choices 204 places 2019/20 1.2 per place 245 first choices 204 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 271 first choices 202 places 2021/22 1.31 per place 250 first choices 191 places 2022/23 1.31 per place 268 first choices 205 places 2023/24 1.3 per place 267 first choices 205 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 231 first choices 205 places 2025/26 1 per place 204 first choices 203 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 235 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at Maidstone Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 235 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Maidstone 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
2015/16 175 242 166 1.38
2016/17 175 231 170 1.32
2017/18 205 212 193 1.03
2018/19 204 231 197 1.13
2019/20 204 245 185 1.2
2020/21 202 271 182 1.34
2021/22 191 250 149 1.31
2022/23 205 268 191 1.31
2023/24 205 267 193 1.3
2024/25 205 231 184 1.13
2025/26 203 204 173 1
2026/27 205 235 195 1.15

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

235

629 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83%

195 of 235

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 205 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

1,025

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,057

103.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

32

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

368

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 Maidstone 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 Maidstone 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Maidstone Grammar School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,251 places 1,292 on roll 2010/11 1,251 places 1,274 on roll 2011/12 1,248 places 1,267 on roll 2012/13 1,241 places 1,265 on roll 2013/14 1,239 places 1,236 on roll 2014/15 1,243 places 1,223 on roll 2015/16 1,230 places 1,211 on roll 2016/17 1,246 places 1,232 on roll 2017/18 1,280 places 1,268 on roll 2018/19 1,417 places 1,290 on roll 2020/21 1,386 places 1,380 on roll 2021/22 1,383 places 1,440 on roll 2022/23 1,383 places 1,426 on roll 2023/24 1,383 places 1,415 on roll 2024/25 1,393 places 1,416 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode ME15 7BT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 118835).

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.