School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Rainham Mark Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 66 families who named Rainham Mark Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 233 and 281 put it first.

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

1.21

first choices for every place available

281 first preferences for 233 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Rainham Mark Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Rainham Mark 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

Rainham Mark 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 Rainham Mark 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 1.29 per place 264 first choices 205 places 2016/17 1.16 per place 238 first choices 205 places 2017/18 1.33 per place 273 first choices 206 places 2018/19 1.34 per place 315 first choices 235 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 295 first choices 233 places 2020/21 1.25 per place 293 first choices 235 places 2021/22 1.45 per place 340 first choices 234 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 309 first choices 234 places 2023/24 1.29 per place 303 first choices 235 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 257 first choices 235 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 305 first choices 232 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 281 first choices 233 places
First preferences per place at Rainham Mark Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 281 first preferences for 233 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Rainham Mark 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
2015/16 205 264 199 1.29
2016/17 205 238 188 1.16
2017/18 206 273 179 1.33
2018/19 235 315 226 1.34
2019/20 233 295 226 1.27
2020/21 235 293 222 1.25
2021/22 234 340 224 1.45
2022/23 234 309 230 1.32
2023/24 235 303 222 1.29
2024/25 235 257 216 1.09
2025/26 232 305 216 1.31
2026/27 233 281 215 1.21

Places offered

233

in 2026/27

Named first choice

281

947 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.5%

215 of 281

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 233 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

1,108

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,179

106.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

71

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

360

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 Rainham Mark 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 Rainham Mark 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Rainham Mark Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,235 places 1,190 on roll 2012/13 1,235 places 1,206 on roll 2013/14 1,242 places 1,230 on roll 2014/15 1,242 places 1,276 on roll 2015/16 1,242 places 1,292 on roll 2016/17 1,242 places 1,325 on roll 2017/18 1,242 places 1,342 on roll 2018/19 1,428 places 1,372 on roll 2020/21 1,428 places 1,476 on roll 2021/22 1,428 places 1,537 on roll 2022/23 1,428 places 1,564 on roll 2023/24 1,428 places 1,536 on roll 2024/25 1,468 places 1,553 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. Rainham Mark Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Rainham Mark Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 September 2022 Arrangements did not comply REF4095

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 ME8 7AJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136864).

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.