School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Saint George's Church of England School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 74 families who named Saint George's Church of England School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 208 and 226 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

226 first preferences for 208 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Saint George's Church of England School

There is no published appeal success rate for Saint George's Church of England 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

Saint George's Church of England School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Saint George's Church of England 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 1.21 per place 215 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1.53 per place 276 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.36 per place 245 first choices 180 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 234 first choices 208 places 2019/20 1.39 per place 248 first choices 179 places 2020/21 1.29 per place 265 first choices 206 places 2021/22 1.1 per place 229 first choices 209 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 243 first choices 203 places 2023/24 1.24 per place 288 first choices 232 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 274 first choices 203 places 2025/26 1.24 per place 256 first choices 207 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 226 first choices 208 places
First preferences per place at Saint George's Church of England School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 226 first preferences for 208 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Saint George's Church of England School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 215 152 1.21
2016/17 180 276 153 1.53
2017/18 180 245 164 1.36
2018/19 208 234 183 1.12
2019/20 179 248 156 1.39
2020/21 206 265 182 1.29
2021/22 209 229 148 1.1
2022/23 203 243 183 1.2
2023/24 232 288 199 1.24
2024/25 203 274 168 1.35
2025/26 207 256 175 1.24
2026/27 208 226 152 1.09

Places offered

208

in 2026/27

Named first choice

226

925 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67.3%

152 of 226

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 208 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

1,320

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,338

101.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

18

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

240

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 Saint George's Church of England 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 Saint George's Church of England 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Saint George's Church of England School 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 1,114 places 1,020 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 971 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 979 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 1,000 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 976 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 991 on roll 2017/18 1,114 places 1,019 on roll 2018/19 1,114 places 1,068 on roll 2020/21 1,474 places 1,231 on roll 2021/22 1,474 places 1,306 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,373 on roll 2023/24 1,530 places 1,475 on roll 2024/25 1,560 places 1,571 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode DA11 7LS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137609).

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.