School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Rochester Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 72 families who named The Rochester Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 240 put it first.

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

1.18

first choices for every place available

240 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Rochester Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Rochester 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

The Rochester 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 11 of those years. In the other 1 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 Rochester 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 1.19 per place 243 first choices 204 places 2016/17 1.26 per place 225 first choices 179 places 2017/18 1.43 per place 288 first choices 202 places 2018/19 1.27 per place 260 first choices 204 places 2019/20 1.7 per place 287 first choices 169 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 267 first choices 234 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 248 first choices 204 places 2022/23 1.16 per place 238 first choices 205 places 2023/24 1.35 per place 276 first choices 204 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 197 first choices 235 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 248 first choices 235 places 2026/27 1.18 per place 240 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at The Rochester Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 240 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Rochester 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
2015/16 204 243 197 1.19
2016/17 179 225 162 1.26
2017/18 202 288 180 1.43
2018/19 204 260 186 1.27
2019/20 169 287 144 1.7
2020/21 234 267 213 1.14
2021/22 204 248 181 1.22
2022/23 205 238 193 1.16
2023/24 204 276 196 1.35
2024/25 235 197 173 0.84
2025/26 235 248 207 1.06
2026/27 204 240 168 1.18

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

240

838 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70%

168 of 240

Offers to families outside the council

22%

45 of 204 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

1,057

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,036

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Rochester 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 The Rochester Grammar School reported 21 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Rochester Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,101 places 1,113 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,113 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,143 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,169 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,185 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,218 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,213 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,224 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,239 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,211 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,181 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,180 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,177 on roll 2024/25 1,357 places 1,166 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. The Rochester Grammar School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Rochester Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
8 August 2021 No fault found ADA3853
3 September 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3431

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 ME1 3BY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136313).

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.