Shortly after the proposal for closure was made public a petition on Change.org was created in an attempt to revert Kent County Council's decision, but this failed.

In Spring 2009 Chaucer was used in a BBC Inside Out South East television news feature to highlight the issue of asbestos in local school buildings.

These previously housed a large majority of English and maths lessons, but later changed to cover humanities subjects such as geography and history as a result of the College System.

The five colleges were named Da Vinci, Curie, Marlowe, Assisi and Athena, and were made up of different subject areas.

Subject groups changed classrooms to reflect this shift and so generally the colleges were geographically situated around the school site.

League tables published by the BBC based on 2008 A-levels ranked Chaucer as the 56th best school in Kent.