School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Oakwood Park Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 35 families who named Oakwood Park Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 160 and 163 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

163 first preferences for 160 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Oakwood Park Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Oakwood Park 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

Oakwood Park Grammar School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 9 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Oakwood Park 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 0.79 per place 80 first choices 101 places 2016/17 0.82 per place 130 first choices 159 places 2017/18 1.08 per place 103 first choices 95 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 113 first choices 119 places 2019/20 0.67 per place 80 first choices 119 places 2020/21 0.69 per place 107 first choices 156 places 2021/22 1.49 per place 191 first choices 128 places 2022/23 0.73 per place 91 first choices 124 places 2023/24 0.78 per place 125 first choices 160 places 2024/25 0.86 per place 121 first choices 141 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 141 first choices 143 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 163 first choices 160 places
First preferences per place at Oakwood Park Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 163 first preferences for 160 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Oakwood Park 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
2015/16 101 80 55 0.79
2016/17 159 130 95 0.82
2017/18 95 103 70 1.08
2018/19 119 113 85 0.95
2019/20 119 80 60 0.67
2020/21 156 107 78 0.69
2021/22 128 191 102 1.49
2022/23 124 91 69 0.73
2023/24 160 125 97 0.78
2024/25 141 121 91 0.86
2025/26 143 141 116 0.99
2026/27 160 163 128 1.02

Places offered

160

in 2026/27

Named first choice

163

607 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.5%

128 of 163

Offers to families outside the council

6%

9 of 158 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Oakwood Park Grammar School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Oakwood Park Grammar School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Children in Local Authority Care or Previously in Local Authority Care — a “looked after child” or a child who was previously looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangements, or special guardianship order. A looked after child is a child who is (a) in the care of the local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions (see definition in Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989). Children previously in Care outside of England – Children who appear to KCC to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. […] criterion continues in the source document
2 Current Family Association – a brother or sister attending the school when the child starts. In this context brother or sister means children who live as brother or sister in the same house, including natural brothers and sisters, adopted siblings, stepbrothers or sisters and foster brothers and sister.
3 Health and Special Access Reasons — medical/health, social and special access reasons will be applied in accordance with the school’s legal obligations, in particular those under the Equality Act 2010. Priority will be given to those children whose mental or physical impairment means they have a demonstrable and significant need to attend Oakwood Park Grammar School. Equally this priority will apply to children whose parents’/guardians’ physical or mental health or social needs mean that they have a demonstrable and significant need to attend Oakwood Park Grammar School. […] criterion continues in the source document
4 Children in receipt of Student Premium – a child is eligible for Student Premium where they have been registered for free school meals (FSM) at any point in the last six years. This does not include children who have only been eligible to receive Universal Infant Free School Meals. Student Premium is also afforded to children in local authority care or previously in local authority care, however these children will be prioritized in the relevant criteria above. Parents wishing to apply under this criteria must ensure they complete the attached Supplementary Information Form and return it to the school by 31st October in the year of application. […] criterion continues in the source document
5 Nearness of children’s homes to school — we use the distance between the child’s permanent home address and Oakwood Park Grammar School measured in a straight line using the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) address point. Distances are measured from a point defined as within the child’s home to a point defined as within the school as specified by the NLPG. The same address point on the school site is used by everybody. When we apply the distance criterion for the school, these straight-line measurements are used to determine how close each applicant’s address is to the school. […] criterion continues in the source document
a. When the parent or learner has failed to respond to an offer within a reasonable time; or b. When a parent or learner has failed to notify the school of important changes to the application information; or
c. The admission authority offered the place on the basis of a fraudulent or intentionally misleading application from the parent or learner. Offers and Appeals Offers will be made on the basis of predicted performance at GCSE, with the requirement that the above grades are achieved in the final examinations prior to entry to the Sixth Form and the student’s 4 chosen subjects being accommodated on the timetable, in feasible group sizes. All offers made during Year 11 are conditional on students meeting the grade criteria specified and will only become firm offers upon confirmation of actual GCSE results. Offers will be made before the end of March 2027. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Oakwood Park Grammar School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

800

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

792

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

8

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

351

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 Oakwood Park 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 Oakwood Park Grammar School reported 8 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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 Oakwood Park Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 987 places 1,010 on roll 2011/12 1,035 places 978 on roll 2012/13 1,130 places 992 on roll 2013/14 1,130 places 1,024 on roll 2014/15 1,130 places 1,003 on roll 2015/16 1,130 places 979 on roll 2016/17 1,130 places 1,040 on roll 2017/18 1,130 places 1,075 on roll 2018/19 1,130 places 1,074 on roll 2020/21 1,130 places 1,099 on roll 2021/22 1,130 places 1,108 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,095 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,066 on roll 2024/25 1,151 places 1,086 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 ME16 8AH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136727).

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.