School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Northfleet School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named Northfleet School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: 202 put it first and 173 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

202 first preferences for 219 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Northfleet School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Northfleet 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

Northfleet School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Northfleet 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 0.66 per place 92 first choices 139 places 2016/17 0.62 per place 122 first choices 198 places 2017/18 0.7 per place 100 first choices 143 places 2018/19 0.7 per place 141 first choices 201 places 2019/20 0.61 per place 126 first choices 207 places 2020/21 0.74 per place 154 first choices 208 places 2021/22 0.55 per place 113 first choices 207 places 2022/23 0.76 per place 153 first choices 202 places 2023/24 0.81 per place 170 first choices 210 places 2024/25 0.95 per place 206 first choices 216 places 2025/26 0.83 per place 181 first choices 218 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 202 first choices 219 places
First preferences per place at Northfleet School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 202 first preferences for 219 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Northfleet 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
2015/16 139 92 92 0.66
2016/17 198 122 121 0.62
2017/18 143 100 100 0.7
2018/19 201 141 141 0.7
2019/20 207 126 126 0.61
2020/21 208 154 152 0.74
2021/22 207 113 113 0.55
2022/23 202 153 153 0.76
2023/24 210 170 148 0.81
2024/25 216 206 153 0.95
2025/26 218 181 160 0.83
2026/27 219 202 173 0.92

Places offered

219

in 2026/27

Named first choice

202

562 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.6%

173 of 202

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 219 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,050

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

258

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 Northfleet 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 Northfleet 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Northfleet School for Girls from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,145 places 1,206 on roll 2010/11 1,121 places 1,197 on roll 2011/12 1,082 places 1,104 on roll 2012/13 1,054 places 985 on roll 2013/14 1,057 places 944 on roll 2014/15 1,027 places 874 on roll 2015/16 1,010 places 886 on roll 2016/17 1,109 places 874 on roll 2017/18 1,098 places 830 on roll 2018/19 1,121 places 891 on roll 2020/21 1,214 places 1,122 on roll 2021/22 1,290 places 1,190 on roll 2022/23 1,290 places 1,257 on roll 2023/24 1,300 places 1,263 on roll 2024/25 1,308 places 1,302 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
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode DA11 8AQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 118788).

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.