School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Canterbury Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 70 families who named The Canterbury Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 203 and 248 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

248 first preferences for 203 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Canterbury Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Canterbury Academy, 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

The Canterbury Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Canterbury Academy, 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 1.13 per place 204 first choices 180 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 261 first choices 211 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 214 first choices 210 places 2018/19 1.02 per place 214 first choices 210 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 220 first choices 208 places 2020/21 0.86 per place 205 first choices 239 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 236 first choices 206 places 2022/23 1.42 per place 266 first choices 187 places 2023/24 1.46 per place 294 first choices 202 places 2024/25 1.37 per place 272 first choices 198 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 257 first choices 197 places 2026/27 1.22 per place 248 first choices 203 places
First preferences per place at The Canterbury Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 248 first preferences for 203 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Canterbury Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 204 157 1.13
2016/17 211 261 182 1.24
2017/18 210 214 181 1.02
2018/19 210 214 179 1.02
2019/20 208 220 187 1.06
2020/21 239 205 200 0.86
2021/22 206 236 149 1.15
2022/23 187 266 163 1.42
2023/24 202 294 186 1.46
2024/25 198 272 178 1.37
2025/26 197 257 177 1.3
2026/27 203 248 178 1.22

Places offered

203

in 2026/27

Named first choice

248

844 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.8%

178 of 248

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 203 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,155

110% of capacity

Over its capacity by

105

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

700

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 The Canterbury Academy 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 The Canterbury Academy 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 The Canterbury Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,118 places 1,140 on roll 2011/12 1,100 places 1,175 on roll 2012/13 1,210 places 1,214 on roll 2013/14 1,210 places 1,254 on roll 2014/15 1,420 places 1,444 on roll 2015/16 1,570 places 1,639 on roll 2016/17 1,570 places 1,768 on roll 2017/18 1,600 places 1,645 on roll 2018/19 1,600 places 1,674 on roll 2020/21 1,600 places 1,808 on roll 2021/22 1,600 places 1,805 on roll 2022/23 1,750 places 1,809 on roll 2023/24 1,750 places 1,874 on roll 2024/25 1,750 places 1,941 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode CT2 8QA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136302).

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.