School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 59 families who named St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 166 and 202 put it first.

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

1.22

first choices for every place available

202 first preferences for 166 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury

There is no published appeal success rate for St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury, 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

St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 9 of those years. In the other 3 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 St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury, 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 0.97 per place 172 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 207 first choices 187 places 2017/18 1.2 per place 224 first choices 186 places 2018/19 1.36 per place 248 first choices 182 places 2019/20 1.19 per place 223 first choices 188 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 171 first choices 165 places 2021/22 0.7 per place 123 first choices 175 places 2022/23 1.3 per place 216 first choices 166 places 2023/24 0.87 per place 138 first choices 158 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 189 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 218 first choices 167 places 2026/27 1.22 per place 202 first choices 166 places
First preferences per place at St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 202 first preferences for 166 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 172 148 0.97
2016/17 187 207 161 1.11
2017/18 186 224 166 1.2
2018/19 182 248 169 1.36
2019/20 188 223 158 1.19
2020/21 165 171 135 1.04
2021/22 175 123 99 0.7
2022/23 166 216 139 1.3
2023/24 158 138 120 0.87
2024/25 170 189 146 1.11
2025/26 167 218 146 1.31
2026/27 166 202 143 1.22

Places offered

166

in 2026/27

Named first choice

202

793 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.8%

143 of 202

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 166 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury 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 St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury, 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 Looked after Catholic children or looked after children in the care of Catholic families, previously looked after Catholic children who have been adopted or who become the subject of a residence or guardianship order, and Catholic children who appear to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. A copy of the baptismal certificate or evidence of reception into the Catholic Church must be provided. See notes 1 and 2.
2 Baptised Catholic children. A copy of the baptismal certificate or evidence of reception into the Catholic Church must be provided. See note 2.
3 Other looked after children, previously looked after children who have been adopted or who have become the subject of a residence or guardianship order, and and children who appear to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. See note 1
4 Children who will have siblings at the school at the date of entry. See note 3
5 Children currently in the listed Catholic feeder primary schools at the time of application. See note 4
6 Children of staff. See note 5
7 Children enrolled in the catechumenate. Evidence of enrolment in the catechumenate will be required. See note 6
8 Children whose families are members of other Christian denominations. Evidence of baptism/evidence of membership required. See note 7
9 Children of other faiths. Evidence of baptism/evidence of membership required. See note 8
10 Other children. The following order of priorities will be applied when applications within any of the above categories exceed the places available and it is necessary to decide between applications within each category.
i. Priority will first be given to children with a sibling in the school at the time of admission (see note 3). ii. Priority will next be given to children who live closest to the school. We use the distance between the child’s permanent home address (defined in KCC’s annual admissions prospectus) and the 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 NLPG. The same address point on the school site is used for everybody. […] 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.

St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury'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

1,085

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

909

83.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

176

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

240

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 St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury 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 St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury reported 176 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.8% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Anselm's Catholic School, Canterbury from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,075 places 1,051 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 1,099 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 1,102 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 1,102 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 1,127 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 1,130 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,104 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,105 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,088 on roll 2023/24 1,140 places 1,089 on roll 2024/25 1,325 places 1,106 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
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode CT1 3EN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140874).

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.