School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Augustine Academy?

In 2026/27, St Augustine Academy offered 170 places and 59 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.35

first choices for every place available

59 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Augustine Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Augustine Academy, 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

St Augustine Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 4 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 St Augustine Academy, 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 0.76 per place 113 first choices 149 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 128 first choices 147 places 2017/18 0.8 per place 119 first choices 148 places 2018/19 0.83 per place 131 first choices 157 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 163 first choices 156 places 2020/21 0.87 per place 135 first choices 155 places 2021/22 0.62 per place 93 first choices 151 places 2022/23 0.76 per place 121 first choices 160 places 2023/24 0.62 per place 115 first choices 185 places 2024/25 0.69 per place 101 first choices 147 places 2025/26 0.6 per place 93 first choices 155 places 2026/27 0.35 per place 59 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at St Augustine Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 59 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Augustine Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 149 113 112 0.76
2016/17 147 128 119 0.87
2017/18 148 119 98 0.8
2018/19 157 131 106 0.83
2019/20 156 163 119 1.04
2020/21 155 135 105 0.87
2021/22 151 93 93 0.62
2022/23 160 121 121 0.76
2023/24 185 115 115 0.62
2024/25 147 101 88 0.69
2025/26 155 93 93 0.6
2026/27 170 59 59 0.35

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

59

344 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

59 of 59

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 89 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

725

96.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

25

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 St Augustine Academy 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 St Augustine Academy reported 25 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Augustine Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 860 places 631 on roll 2012/13 950 places 598 on roll 2013/14 950 places 583 on roll 2014/15 950 places 543 on roll 2015/16 950 places 546 on roll 2016/17 750 places 577 on roll 2017/18 750 places 632 on roll 2018/19 750 places 698 on roll 2020/21 750 places 751 on roll 2021/22 750 places 747 on roll 2022/23 750 places 754 on roll 2023/24 780 places 745 on roll 2024/25 750 places 725 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode ME16 8AE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136923).

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.