School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Harvey Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 48 families who named The Harvey Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 147 and 190 put it first.

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

1.29

first choices for every place available

190 first preferences for 147 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Harvey Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Harvey Grammar 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 Harvey Grammar 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 The Harvey Grammar 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 1.27 per place 191 first choices 150 places 2016/17 1.39 per place 209 first choices 150 places 2017/18 1.32 per place 198 first choices 150 places 2018/19 1.26 per place 187 first choices 149 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 197 first choices 149 places 2020/21 1.49 per place 221 first choices 148 places 2021/22 1.8 per place 270 first choices 150 places 2022/23 1.34 per place 201 first choices 150 places 2023/24 1.41 per place 210 first choices 149 places 2024/25 1.33 per place 200 first choices 150 places 2025/26 1.26 per place 189 first choices 150 places 2026/27 1.29 per place 190 first choices 147 places
First preferences per place at The Harvey Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 190 first preferences for 147 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Harvey Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 150 191 145 1.27
2016/17 150 209 146 1.39
2017/18 150 198 146 1.32
2018/19 149 187 145 1.26
2019/20 149 197 149 1.32
2020/21 148 221 144 1.49
2021/22 150 270 146 1.8
2022/23 150 201 146 1.34
2023/24 149 210 146 1.41
2024/25 150 200 150 1.33
2025/26 150 189 147 1.26
2026/27 147 190 142 1.29

Places offered

147

in 2026/27

Named first choice

190

348 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.7%

142 of 190

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 147 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

838

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

788

94% of capacity

Unfilled places

50

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Harvey Grammar 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 Harvey Grammar School reported 50 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Harvey Grammar School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,000 places 855 on roll 2013/14 1,000 places 862 on roll 2014/15 1,000 places 887 on roll 2015/16 1,000 places 901 on roll 2016/17 1,000 places 923 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 963 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 974 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 1,026 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 1,021 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,024 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,026 on roll 2024/25 1,138 places 1,011 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Harvey Grammar School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Harvey Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 October 2022 No fault found ADA3932
12 November 2019 No fault found ADA3583

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 CT19 5JY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138480).

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.