School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Valley Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 56 families who named Valley Park School as their first choice did not get a place: 223 put it first and 167 of them were offered one.

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

56

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

223 first preferences for 237 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Valley Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Valley Park 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

Valley Park School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 4 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 Valley Park 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 1.5 per place 358 first choices 239 places 2016/17 1.38 per place 371 first choices 268 places 2017/18 1.58 per place 424 first choices 268 places 2018/19 1.65 per place 435 first choices 264 places 2019/20 1.63 per place 431 first choices 265 places 2020/21 1.56 per place 411 first choices 263 places 2021/22 0.9 per place 241 first choices 268 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 295 first choices 269 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 221 first choices 237 places 2024/25 0.59 per place 141 first choices 238 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 205 first choices 235 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 223 first choices 237 places
First preferences per place at Valley Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 223 first preferences for 237 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Valley Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 239 358 213 1.5
2016/17 268 371 255 1.38
2017/18 268 424 245 1.58
2018/19 264 435 252 1.65
2019/20 265 431 242 1.63
2020/21 263 411 239 1.56
2021/22 268 241 186 0.9
2022/23 269 295 220 1.1
2023/24 237 221 164 0.93
2024/25 238 141 127 0.59
2025/26 235 205 168 0.87
2026/27 237 223 167 0.94

Places offered

237

in 2026/27

Named first choice

223

980 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.9%

167 of 223

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 237 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

1,261

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,283

101.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

22

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

340

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 Valley Park 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 Valley Park 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Valley Park School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,035 places 1,101 on roll 2011/12 1,051 places 1,164 on roll 2012/13 1,251 places 1,203 on roll 2013/14 1,480 places 1,250 on roll 2014/15 1,480 places 1,351 on roll 2015/16 1,480 places 1,466 on roll 2016/17 1,480 places 1,512 on roll 2017/18 1,480 places 1,555 on roll 2018/19 1,480 places 1,610 on roll 2020/21 1,480 places 1,665 on roll 2021/22 1,650 places 1,646 on roll 2022/23 1,690 places 1,648 on roll 2023/24 1,690 places 1,652 on roll 2024/25 1,601 places 1,587 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 ME14 5DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136581).

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.