School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Lenham School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 16 families who named The Lenham School as their first choice did not get a place: 149 put it first and 133 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Kent actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

16

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

149 first preferences for 158 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Lenham School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Lenham 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 Lenham School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 10 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 6 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 Lenham School, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.69 per place 72 first choices 104 places 2018/19 0.68 per place 90 first choices 133 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 136 first choices 150 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 138 first choices 146 places 2021/22 1.07 per place 159 first choices 148 places 2022/23 0.81 per place 125 first choices 154 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 148 first choices 153 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 156 first choices 158 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 164 first choices 156 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 149 first choices 158 places
First preferences per place at The Lenham School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 149 first preferences for 158 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Lenham School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 104 72 72 0.69
2018/19 133 90 90 0.68
2019/20 150 136 110 0.91
2020/21 146 138 112 0.95
2021/22 148 159 110 1.07
2022/23 154 125 101 0.81
2023/24 153 148 119 0.97
2024/25 158 156 129 0.99
2025/26 156 164 140 1.05
2026/27 158 149 133 0.94

Places offered

158

in 2026/27

Named first choice

149

372 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.3%

133 of 149

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 158 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

767

102.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

17

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

74

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 Lenham 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 Lenham School 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Lenham School from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 884 places 504 on roll 2017/18 925 places 451 on roll 2018/19 925 places 535 on roll 2020/21 925 places 658 on roll 2021/22 925 places 728 on roll 2022/23 950 places 784 on roll 2023/24 950 places 806 on roll 2024/25 824 places 811 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 ME17 2LL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143954).

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.