School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sir Roger Manwood's School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Sir Roger Manwood's School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 120 and 147 put it first.

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

1.23

first choices for every place available

147 first preferences for 120 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sir Roger Manwood's School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sir Roger Manwood's 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

Sir Roger Manwood's 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 Sir Roger Manwood's 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 1.1 per place 160 first choices 145 places 2016/17 1.29 per place 194 first choices 150 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 159 first choices 143 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 167 first choices 149 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 159 first choices 149 places 2020/21 1.4 per place 202 first choices 144 places 2021/22 1.85 per place 240 first choices 130 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 138 first choices 120 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 160 first choices 137 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 154 first choices 124 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 137 first choices 113 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 147 first choices 120 places
First preferences per place at Sir Roger Manwood's School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 147 first preferences for 120 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sir Roger Manwood's School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 145 160 139 1.1
2016/17 150 194 143 1.29
2017/18 143 159 139 1.11
2018/19 149 167 139 1.12
2019/20 149 159 142 1.07
2020/21 144 202 139 1.4
2021/22 130 240 124 1.85
2022/23 120 138 110 1.15
2023/24 137 160 133 1.17
2024/25 124 154 119 1.24
2025/26 113 137 106 1.21
2026/27 120 147 113 1.23

Places offered

120

in 2026/27

Named first choice

147

412 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.9%

113 of 147

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 118 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

783

104.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

33

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

320

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 Sir Roger Manwood's 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 Sir Roger Manwood's 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 Sir Roger Manwood's School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 866 places 911 on roll 2011/12 866 places 899 on roll 2012/13 866 places 891 on roll 2013/14 870 places 906 on roll 2014/15 870 places 932 on roll 2015/16 930 places 953 on roll 2016/17 930 places 1,005 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,029 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,022 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,015 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,008 on roll 2022/23 1,070 places 986 on roll 2023/24 1,070 places 1,014 on roll 2024/25 1,070 places 1,028 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 CT13 9JX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136501).

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.