School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Charles Dickens School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 83 families who named The Charles Dickens School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 227 and 288 put it first.

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

1.27

first choices for every place available

288 first preferences for 227 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Charles Dickens School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Charles Dickens 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

The Charles Dickens 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 The Charles Dickens 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 0.84 per place 194 first choices 230 places 2016/17 0.72 per place 164 first choices 228 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 198 first choices 229 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 215 first choices 229 places 2019/20 0.95 per place 219 first choices 231 places 2020/21 0.82 per place 186 first choices 226 places 2021/22 0.5 per place 116 first choices 230 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 214 first choices 222 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 225 first choices 221 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 220 first choices 225 places 2025/26 1.27 per place 285 first choices 225 places 2026/27 1.27 per place 288 first choices 227 places
First preferences per place at The Charles Dickens School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 288 first preferences for 227 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Charles Dickens School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 230 194 150 0.84
2016/17 228 164 134 0.72
2017/18 229 198 145 0.86
2018/19 229 215 151 0.94
2019/20 231 219 145 0.95
2020/21 226 186 149 0.82
2021/22 230 116 95 0.5
2022/23 222 214 172 0.96
2023/24 221 225 158 1.02
2024/25 225 220 170 0.98
2025/26 225 285 185 1.27
2026/27 227 288 205 1.27

Places offered

227

in 2026/27

Named first choice

288

887 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.2%

205 of 288

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 227 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 118910.

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

1,443

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,098

76.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

345

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Charles Dickens 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 The Charles Dickens School reported 345 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 76.1% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Charles Dickens School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,160 places 1,123 on roll 2010/11 1,160 places 1,146 on roll 2011/12 1,160 places 1,153 on roll 2012/13 1,160 places 1,159 on roll 2013/14 1,260 places 1,172 on roll 2014/15 1,260 places 1,171 on roll 2015/16 1,209 places 1,137 on roll 2016/17 1,209 places 1,094 on roll 2017/18 1,160 places 1,066 on roll 2018/19 1,160 places 1,080 on roll 2020/21 1,160 places 1,112 on roll 2021/22 1,160 places 1,109 on roll 2022/23 1,160 places 1,100 on roll 2023/24 1,160 places 1,101 on roll 2024/25 1,443 places 1,098 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode CT10 2RL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144015).

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.