School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hillview School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Hillview School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: 222 put it first and 186 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.

36

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

222 first preferences for 235 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hillview School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Hillview 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 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

Hillview School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 5 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 Hillview 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 0.78 per place 161 first choices 207 places 2016/17 0.81 per place 167 first choices 207 places 2017/18 0.84 per place 175 first choices 208 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 205 first choices 240 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 223 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.09 per place 258 first choices 236 places 2021/22 0.63 per place 152 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 261 first choices 238 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 212 first choices 232 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 228 first choices 234 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 218 first choices 233 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 222 first choices 235 places
First preferences per place at Hillview School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 222 first preferences for 235 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hillview 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
2015/16 207 161 151 0.78
2016/17 207 167 167 0.81
2017/18 208 175 172 0.84
2018/19 240 205 192 0.85
2019/20 240 223 192 0.93
2020/21 236 258 195 1.09
2021/22 240 152 129 0.63
2022/23 238 261 206 1.1
2023/24 232 212 194 0.91
2024/25 234 228 200 0.97
2025/26 233 218 189 0.94
2026/27 235 222 186 0.94

Places offered

235

in 2026/27

Named first choice

222

740 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.8%

186 of 222

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 235 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

1,044

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,137

108.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

93

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

416

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 Hillview 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 Hillview School for Girls 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hillview School for Girls from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,340 places 1,291 on roll 2012/13 1,340 places 1,301 on roll 2013/14 1,340 places 1,325 on roll 2014/15 1,340 places 1,259 on roll 2015/16 1,340 places 1,168 on roll 2016/17 1,340 places 1,139 on roll 2017/18 1,340 places 1,122 on roll 2018/19 1,340 places 1,214 on roll 2020/21 1,340 places 1,364 on roll 2021/22 1,340 places 1,416 on roll 2022/23 1,400 places 1,478 on roll 2023/24 1,435 places 1,525 on roll 2024/25 1,460 places 1,534 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 TN9 2HE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137104).

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.