School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chatham Grammar?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 87 families who named Chatham Grammar as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 150 and 185 put it first.

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

1.23

first choices for every place available

185 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chatham Grammar

There is no published appeal success rate for Chatham Grammar, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Medway 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 Medway, 22.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 299 of 1,307 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 Medway.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Medway 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

Chatham Grammar turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 8 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 Chatham Grammar, 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 1.56 per place 103 first choices 66 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 83 first choices 87 places 2017/18 0.69 per place 100 first choices 144 places 2018/19 1.05 per place 85 first choices 81 places 2019/20 0.81 per place 106 first choices 131 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 114 first choices 95 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 116 first choices 102 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 136 first choices 120 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 143 first choices 148 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 136 first choices 135 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 132 first choices 126 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 185 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at Chatham Grammar. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 185 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chatham Grammar, 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 66 103 59 1.56
2016/17 87 83 50 0.95
2017/18 144 100 58 0.69
2018/19 81 85 40 1.05
2019/20 131 106 56 0.81
2020/21 95 114 65 1.2
2021/22 102 116 60 1.14
2022/23 120 136 78 1.13
2023/24 148 143 83 0.97
2024/25 135 136 81 1.01
2025/26 126 132 82 1.05
2026/27 150 185 98 1.23

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

185

1,151 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

53%

98 of 185

Offers to families outside the council

19%

29 of 150 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

713

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

757

106.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

44

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

280

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 Chatham Grammar 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 Chatham Grammar 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chatham Grammar from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 967 places 833 on roll 2012/13 967 places 779 on roll 2013/14 976 places 727 on roll 2014/15 967 places 708 on roll 2015/16 967 places 662 on roll 2016/17 967 places 629 on roll 2017/18 967 places 705 on roll 2018/19 976 places 731 on roll 2020/21 976 places 876 on roll 2021/22 976 places 918 on roll 2022/23 976 places 954 on roll 2023/24 976 places 981 on roll 2024/25 993 places 952 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Medway

Postcode ME5 7EH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137389).

Other contested secondary schools in Medway

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.