School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Fulston Manor School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Fulston Manor School as their first choice did not get a place: 196 put it first and 178 of them were offered one.

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

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

196 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Fulston Manor School

There is no published appeal success rate for Fulston Manor 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 Kent 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 Kent, 27.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 1,757 of 6,368 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 Kent.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kent 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

Fulston Manor School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Fulston Manor 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 1.46 per place 305 first choices 209 places 2016/17 1.37 per place 282 first choices 206 places 2017/18 1.39 per place 291 first choices 209 places 2018/19 1.7 per place 352 first choices 207 places 2019/20 1.64 per place 341 first choices 208 places 2020/21 1.52 per place 314 first choices 206 places 2021/22 1.48 per place 307 first choices 207 places 2022/23 1.5 per place 326 first choices 217 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 300 first choices 218 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 235 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 221 first choices 202 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 196 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at Fulston Manor School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 196 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Fulston Manor School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 209 305 192 1.46
2016/17 206 282 185 1.37
2017/18 209 291 189 1.39
2018/19 207 352 195 1.7
2019/20 208 341 189 1.64
2020/21 206 314 195 1.52
2021/22 207 307 173 1.48
2022/23 217 326 207 1.5
2023/24 218 300 195 1.38
2024/25 204 235 167 1.15
2025/26 202 221 175 1.09
2026/27 204 196 178 0.96

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

196

910 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.8%

178 of 196

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 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

1,053

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,056

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

420

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 Fulston Manor 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 Fulston Manor School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

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

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Fulston Manor School 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 1,104 places 1,170 on roll 2011/12 1,104 places 1,149 on roll 2012/13 1,175 places 1,174 on roll 2013/14 1,300 places 1,243 on roll 2014/15 1,330 places 1,254 on roll 2015/16 1,330 places 1,272 on roll 2016/17 1,330 places 1,260 on roll 2017/18 1,360 places 1,285 on roll 2018/19 1,360 places 1,329 on roll 2020/21 1,360 places 1,366 on roll 2021/22 1,360 places 1,344 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,321 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,317 on roll 2024/25 1,473 places 1,329 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode ME10 4EG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136324).

Other contested secondary schools in Kent

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.