School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Holcombe Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 50 families who named Holcombe Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: 137 put it first and 87 of them were offered one.

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

50

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

137 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Holcombe Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Holcombe 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 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

Holcombe Grammar 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 Holcombe 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 1.25 per place 100 first choices 80 places 2016/17 1.15 per place 105 first choices 91 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 124 first choices 126 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 148 first choices 146 places 2019/20 0.81 per place 115 first choices 142 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 117 first choices 150 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 116 first choices 147 places 2022/23 0.8 per place 119 first choices 148 places 2023/24 0.89 per place 134 first choices 150 places 2024/25 0.73 per place 110 first choices 150 places 2025/26 0.77 per place 137 first choices 179 places 2026/27 0.77 per place 137 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Holcombe Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 137 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Holcombe 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 80 100 55 1.25
2016/17 91 105 55 1.15
2017/18 126 124 70 0.98
2018/19 146 148 79 1.01
2019/20 142 115 65 0.81
2020/21 150 117 61 0.78
2021/22 147 116 59 0.79
2022/23 148 119 68 0.8
2023/24 150 134 77 0.89
2024/25 150 110 71 0.73
2025/26 179 137 81 0.77
2026/27 179 137 87 0.77

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

137

968 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

63.5%

87 of 137

Offers to families outside the council

53%

94 of 179 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

716

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

743

103.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

27

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 Holcombe 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 Holcombe Grammar 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 Holcombe Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,116 places 958 on roll 2011/12 1,116 places 906 on roll 2012/13 1,116 places 926 on roll 2013/14 1,116 places 889 on roll 2014/15 1,116 places 771 on roll 2015/16 1,116 places 788 on roll 2016/17 1,116 places 821 on roll 2017/18 1,116 places 835 on roll 2018/19 1,116 places 843 on roll 2020/21 1,116 places 943 on roll 2021/22 1,116 places 1,053 on roll 2022/23 1,116 places 1,071 on roll 2023/24 1,116 places 1,025 on roll 2024/25 1,116 places 1,036 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. Holcombe Grammar School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in each of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Holcombe Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
28 January 2019 Arrangements did not comply ADA3373
3 September 2018 Arrangements did not comply case reference number ADA3429

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
Medway

Postcode ME4 6JB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136594).

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.