The Abbey School, Became a Converter Academy August 2011. Faversham. OFSTED May 2017 - Good. Has been picking up in reputation over past five years. For more information go to: The Abbey School, Faversham Explained. The current headteacher, Dr Spellar, appointed in 2018, He was concerned about behavioural standards during Covid which saw exclusion rates soar, and brought in a controversial consultant to sort them out, attracting considerable media attention.

Had been picking up pupils from Whitstable, but with improvement there, first choices have fallen away. 

2014 - 2020 no appeals for school admission

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Angley School, Cranbrook. Now closed and re-opened as High Weald Academy. 

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The Archbishop's School, Canterbury.  Foundation School. Was the Canterbury school of choice some years ago but since 2016, when it received a Good Ofsted, has been plummeting downhill ever since. Its reputation lingered until 2018 when it was still oversubscribed, but by 2021 had all 98 Local Authority Allocations in Canterbury District and 30 fewer first choices than any other local school. The sudden drop in GCSE performance in 2019 fits the pattern of decline. The headteacher left the school mid-June 2019, deciding to 'step away', presumably paying the price for poor performance. 2021 allocations show the reputation of the school has plummeted even further, reflecting probable poor leadership with a new headteacher appointed from the KCC Advisory Service. This is underlined by the school's appearance in the table of schools making the highest proportion of exclusions in 2019-20, usually a sign of poor discipline in a school. Had the third-highest fallout rate in Kent between allocation of places in Year Seven in 2020 and the October Census that year, losing 40% of its potential pupils.  

The school expanded its admission number to 170 to take ensure all Canterbury children were offered a place last year (as a County school it would have had no option), but as a result was filled with the 66 LAAS. In the event, 40% of the children offered places never turned up in September, the third largest figure in Kent, and just ahead of New Line Learning Academy, the previous school of the current headteacher. The 2021 data is even more extreme, with the admission number being raised to 185, but with 98 LAAs. A third of the 140 offers in 2019 found other schools before the October 2019 school census, probably not starting in September. The previous year, 21 of the cohort left after allocations. One can only speculate what Alasdair Hogarth, headteacher when the school was a heavily oversubscribed Outstanding school, would have thought of this, probably the most dramatic recent fall in popularity of any school in the county. 

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Astor College (A Specialist College for the Arts), Dover.  Became a converter academy in June 2012. 10% of places awarded on ability in the visual arts if it was oversubscribed, which it hasn't been since then. . The school is the lead school of the Dover Federation of the Arts, in conjunction with Shatterlocks Infant School, Barton Junior School and White Cliffs Primary College of the Arts.  OFSTED March-July 2015, after a controversial series of events, when the school was initially placed in Special Measures, it was found to Require Improvement, down from Good.  Given full warning by the government as to its performance in October 2015. Run by controversial Chief Executive Chris Russell, although he retired from his seconded position as Executive Principal of the Duke of York's Royal Military School, also an academy in Dover, in December 2016 and has now retired leaving the school in a difficult place. The school suffers from the Dover grammar schools running their own selection tests, which took an additional 148 children away from the non-selective schools. I detect some improvement since then in terms of reputation, with the highest proportion of first choices for many years, in a year when N/S schools were hit as explained in the introduction to this page. Good staying on rate into the Sixth Form 2020. The school has attracted a strong contingent of foreign students in the Sixth Form in previous years, but this may have been hit by Covid and Brexit. the school regularly has one of the highest rates of fixed term exclusions in the county. 

Further information at Astor College Explained

2018 58 LAAs; No admission appeals. 

Progress 8 sixth-lowest in Kent in 2017, Attainment 8 Sixth lowest. Similar in 2018 and 2019. 

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Aylesford School - Sports College. Completely rebuilt around 2010 under a PFI scheme. Struggled for some years with performance and hence popularity, but has been improving over the past three years following a Management takeover by Wrotham School which appears to have been of benefit. However, the PFI difficulties have stopped it being academised at present.  The school has been oversubscribed in 2020 and 2021, for the first time for many years. It was previously dependent on numbers from Medway, coming down Bluebell Hill, but these have now been squeezed withthe increased popularity from local families. Looks as if a new Ofsted Inspection would be welcome!    

Once above government floor standards for GCSE, the school slipped for 2014 and  2015. Progress 8 and Attainment 8 both third lowest in Kent in 2017, as popularity has slumped.   

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