School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St John's Catholic Comprehensive?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 149 families who named St John's Catholic Comprehensive as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 172 and 304 put it first.

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

1.77

first choices for every place available

304 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St John's Catholic Comprehensive

There is no published appeal success rate for St John's Catholic Comprehensive, 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 John's Catholic Comprehensive turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 9 of those years. In the other 2 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 John's Catholic Comprehensive, 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 0.92 per place 165 first choices 179 places 2016/17 1.08 per place 195 first choices 180 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 167 first choices 194 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 219 first choices 193 places 2019/20 1.26 per place 244 first choices 194 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 221 first choices 194 places 2021/22 1 per place 189 first choices 189 places 2022/23 1.16 per place 221 first choices 190 places 2023/24 1.57 per place 293 first choices 187 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 251 first choices 186 places 2025/26 1.47 per place 275 first choices 187 places 2026/27 1.77 per place 304 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at St John's Catholic Comprehensive. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 304 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St John's Catholic Comprehensive, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 179 165 148 0.92
2016/17 180 195 155 1.08
2017/18 194 167 158 0.86
2018/19 193 219 163 1.13
2019/20 194 244 175 1.26
2020/21 194 221 162 1.14
2021/22 189 189 145 1
2022/23 190 221 162 1.16
2023/24 187 293 171 1.57
2024/25 186 251 156 1.35
2025/26 187 275 169 1.47
2026/27 172 304 155 1.77

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

304

813 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

51%

155 of 304

Offers to families outside the council

7%

12 of 172 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

981

109% of capacity

Over its capacity by

81

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

288

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 John's Catholic Comprehensive 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 John's Catholic Comprehensive 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 St John's Catholic Comprehensive from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,120 places 1,114 on roll 2010/11 1,148 places 1,109 on roll 2011/12 1,161 places 1,138 on roll 2012/13 1,147 places 1,068 on roll 2013/14 1,136 places 1,079 on roll 2014/15 1,154 places 1,121 on roll 2015/16 1,166 places 1,131 on roll 2016/17 1,184 places 1,126 on roll 2017/18 1,176 places 1,168 on roll 2018/19 1,201 places 1,185 on roll 2020/21 1,219 places 1,236 on roll 2021/22 1,219 places 1,265 on roll 2022/23 1,219 places 1,292 on roll 2023/24 1,219 places 1,314 on roll 2024/25 1,188 places 1,322 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode DA12 2JW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 118933).

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.