School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Victory Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named The Victory Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 191 put it first and 167 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.

24

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

191 first preferences for 222 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Victory Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Victory Academy, 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 Victory Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Victory Academy, 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 0.49 per place 82 first choices 169 places 2016/17 0.78 per place 101 first choices 129 places 2017/18 0.67 per place 113 first choices 168 places 2018/19 0.64 per place 151 first choices 236 places 2019/20 0.63 per place 151 first choices 239 places 2020/21 0.76 per place 180 first choices 237 places 2021/22 0.71 per place 147 first choices 208 places 2022/23 0.72 per place 153 first choices 213 places 2023/24 0.71 per place 148 first choices 209 places 2024/25 1 per place 209 first choices 209 places 2025/26 0.73 per place 170 first choices 233 places 2026/27 0.86 per place 191 first choices 222 places
First preferences per place at The Victory Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 191 first preferences for 222 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Victory Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 169 82 82 0.49
2016/17 129 101 101 0.78
2017/18 168 113 113 0.67
2018/19 236 151 151 0.64
2019/20 239 151 150 0.63
2020/21 237 180 180 0.76
2021/22 208 147 146 0.71
2022/23 213 153 153 0.72
2023/24 209 148 148 0.71
2024/25 209 209 181 1
2025/26 233 170 163 0.73
2026/27 222 191 167 0.86

Places offered

222

in 2026/27

Named first choice

191

560 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.4%

167 of 191

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 222 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

1,140

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,053

92.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

87

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 Victory Academy 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 Victory Academy reported 87 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.4% 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 Victory Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,500 places 1,145 on roll 2011/12 1,500 places 996 on roll 2012/13 1,500 places 968 on roll 2013/14 1,500 places 868 on roll 2014/15 1,500 places 837 on roll 2015/16 1,500 places 735 on roll 2016/17 1,500 places 677 on roll 2017/18 1,500 places 736 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 837 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,095 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,160 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,179 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,193 on roll 2024/25 1,440 places 1,221 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Medway

Postcode ME4 5JB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136108).

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.