School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Edmund's Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named St Edmund's Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: 136 put it first and 116 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.

20

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

136 first preferences for 138 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Edmund's Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Edmund's Catholic 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

St Edmund's Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 1 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 Edmund's Catholic 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 0.82 per place 66 first choices 80 places 2016/17 0.72 per place 74 first choices 103 places 2017/18 0.71 per place 82 first choices 115 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 88 first choices 104 places 2019/20 0.82 per place 98 first choices 120 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 139 first choices 125 places 2021/22 0.83 per place 98 first choices 118 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 116 first choices 138 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 153 first choices 140 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 150 first choices 149 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 145 first choices 143 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 136 first choices 138 places
First preferences per place at St Edmund's Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 136 first preferences for 138 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Edmund's Catholic 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 80 66 66 0.82
2016/17 103 74 74 0.72
2017/18 115 82 82 0.71
2018/19 104 88 88 0.85
2019/20 120 98 98 0.82
2020/21 125 139 108 1.11
2021/22 118 98 89 0.83
2022/23 138 116 114 0.84
2023/24 140 153 119 1.09
2024/25 149 150 137 1.01
2025/26 143 145 122 1.01
2026/27 138 136 116 0.99

Places offered

138

in 2026/27

Named first choice

136

462 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.3%

116 of 136

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 138 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 118912.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria St Edmund's Catholic School 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 St Edmund's Catholic School, 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 Looked after Catholic children or looked after children in the care of Catholic families, previously looked after Catholic children who have been adopted or who become the subject of a residence or guardianship order, and Catholic 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. A copy of the baptismal certificate or evidence of reception into the Catholic Church must be provided. See notes 1 and 2.
2 Baptised Catholic children. A copy of the baptismal certificate or evidence of reception into the Catholic Church must be provided. See note 2.
3 Other looked after children, previously looked after children who have been adopted or who have become the subject of a residence or guardianship order, and and 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. See note 1
4 Children who will have siblings at the school at the date of entry. See note 3
5 Children currently in the listed Catholic feeder primary schools at the time of application. See note 4
6 Children of staff. See note 5
7 Children enrolled in the catechumenate. Evidence of enrolment in the catechumenate will be required. See note 6
8 Children whose families are members of other Christian denominations. Evidence of baptism/evidence of membership required. See note 7
9 Children of other faiths. Evidence of baptism/evidence of membership required. See note 8
10 Other children. The following order of priorities will be applied when applications within any of the above categories exceed the places available and it is necessary to decide between applications within each category.
i. Priority will first be given to children with a sibling in the school at the time of admission (see note 3). ii. Priority will next be given to children who live closest to the school. We use the distance between the child’s permanent home address (defined in KCC’s annual admissions prospectus) and the school, measured in a straight line using the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) address point. Distances are measured from a point defined as within the child’s home to a point defined as within the school as specified by NLPG. The same address point on the school site is used for everybody. […] criterion continues in the source document

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.

St Edmund's Catholic School'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

609

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

633

103.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

24

reported as full or beyond

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 Edmund's Catholic 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 St Edmund's Catholic 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Edmund's Catholic School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 912 places 835 on roll 2010/11 805 places 826 on roll 2011/12 884 places 795 on roll 2012/13 827 places 757 on roll 2013/14 827 places 695 on roll 2014/15 826 places 594 on roll 2015/16 826 places 553 on roll 2016/17 826 places 521 on roll 2017/18 600 places 471 on roll 2018/19 600 places 459 on roll 2020/21 600 places 540 on roll 2021/22 600 places 546 on roll 2022/23 600 places 566 on roll 2023/24 630 places 606 on roll 2024/25 609 places 633 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 CT16 2QB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141217).

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.