School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Maidstone Grammar School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named Maidstone Grammar School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: 132 put it first and 103 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.

29

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

132 first preferences for 133 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Maidstone Grammar School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Maidstone Grammar 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

Maidstone Grammar School for Girls turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 10 of those years. In the other 2 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 Maidstone Grammar 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 1.04 per place 174 first choices 167 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 159 first choices 146 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 136 first choices 138 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 168 first choices 149 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 136 first choices 122 places 2020/21 1.07 per place 131 first choices 123 places 2021/22 1.39 per place 211 first choices 152 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 139 first choices 133 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 175 first choices 154 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 175 first choices 166 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 142 first choices 131 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 132 first choices 133 places
First preferences per place at Maidstone Grammar School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 132 first preferences for 133 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Maidstone Grammar 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
2015/16 167 174 137 1.04
2016/17 146 159 123 1.09
2017/18 138 136 116 0.99
2018/19 149 168 134 1.13
2019/20 122 136 109 1.11
2020/21 123 131 109 1.07
2021/22 152 211 113 1.39
2022/23 133 139 111 1.05
2023/24 154 175 135 1.14
2024/25 166 175 141 1.05
2025/26 131 142 117 1.08
2026/27 133 132 103 0.99

Places offered

133

in 2026/27

Named first choice

132

699 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78%

103 of 132

Offers to families outside the council

18%

24 of 132 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Maidstone Grammar School for Girls published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Maidstone Grammar School for Girls, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Eligible girls who are looked after and previously looked after children: A looked after child or a child who was previously looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangements, or special guardianship order. A looked after child is a child who is: (a) in the care of a local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions (see the definition in Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989). Children previously in Care outside of England - Children who appear to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. […] criterion continues in the source document
2 Students in receipt of Pupil Premium: A student is eligible for Pupil Premium where they have been registered for free school meals (FSM) at any point in the last 6 years. This does not include students who have only been eligible to receive Universal Infant Free School Meals. Parents wishing to apply under this criterion must ensure that they complete the attached

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Maidstone Grammar School for Girls's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,002

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

917

91.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

85

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

460

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 Maidstone Grammar 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 Maidstone Grammar School for Girls reported 85 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.5% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Maidstone Grammar School for Girls from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,197 places 1,203 on roll 2010/11 1,216 places 1,217 on roll 2011/12 1,222 places 1,248 on roll 2012/13 1,241 places 1,265 on roll 2013/14 1,276 places 1,243 on roll 2014/15 1,269 places 1,229 on roll 2015/16 1,260 places 1,221 on roll 2016/17 1,339 places 1,219 on roll 2017/18 1,245 places 1,196 on roll 2018/19 1,228 places 1,202 on roll 2020/21 1,244 places 1,215 on roll 2021/22 1,244 places 1,185 on roll 2022/23 1,244 places 1,200 on roll 2023/24 1,244 places 1,245 on roll 2024/25 1,462 places 1,273 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode ME16 0SF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 118836).

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.