School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chislehurst School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 48 families who named Chislehurst School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: 210 put it first and 162 of them were offered one.

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

48

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

210 first preferences for 241 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chislehurst School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Chislehurst School for Girls, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Bromley 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 Bromley, 5.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 390 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 Bromley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bromley 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

Chislehurst School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Chislehurst School for Girls, 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 0.41 per place 91 first choices 223 places 2016/17 0.43 per place 99 first choices 229 places 2017/18 0.39 per place 98 first choices 250 places 2018/19 0.36 per place 85 first choices 233 places 2019/20 0.49 per place 109 first choices 223 places 2020/21 0.49 per place 99 first choices 204 places 2021/22 0.33 per place 74 first choices 221 places 2022/23 0.49 per place 109 first choices 222 places 2023/24 0.63 per place 140 first choices 221 places 2024/25 0.63 per place 153 first choices 242 places 2025/26 0.88 per place 213 first choices 243 places 2026/27 0.87 per place 210 first choices 241 places
First preferences per place at Chislehurst School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 210 first preferences for 241 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chislehurst School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 223 91 91 0.41
2016/17 229 99 99 0.43
2017/18 250 98 98 0.39
2018/19 233 85 85 0.36
2019/20 223 109 107 0.49
2020/21 204 99 99 0.49
2021/22 221 74 74 0.33
2022/23 222 109 99 0.49
2023/24 221 140 119 0.63
2024/25 242 153 146 0.63
2025/26 243 213 178 0.88
2026/27 241 210 162 0.87

Places offered

241

in 2026/27

Named first choice

210

938 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.1%

162 of 210

Offers to families outside the council

63%

152 of 241 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

1,040

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

961

92.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

79

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

340

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 Chislehurst School for Girls 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 Chislehurst School for Girls reported 79 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 Chislehurst School for Girls 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 1,344 places 1,340 on roll 2011/12 1,344 places 1,335 on roll 2012/13 1,344 places 1,322 on roll 2013/14 1,344 places 1,279 on roll 2014/15 1,344 places 1,215 on roll 2015/16 1,344 places 1,144 on roll 2016/17 1,344 places 1,106 on roll 2017/18 1,344 places 1,078 on roll 2018/19 1,344 places 1,059 on roll 2020/21 1,344 places 1,076 on roll 2021/22 1,470 places 1,098 on roll 2022/23 1,470 places 1,057 on roll 2023/24 1,470 places 1,085 on roll 2024/25 1,380 places 1,157 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. Chislehurst School for Girls has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in each of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Chislehurst School for Girls. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
30 October 2023 Arrangements did not comply REF4121
15 July 2022 Arrangements did not comply ADA3916

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
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bromley

Postcode BR7 6HE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136467).

Other contested secondary schools in Bromley

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.