School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Folkestone School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 53 families who named The Folkestone School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 180 and 233 put it first.

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

1.29

first choices for every place available

233 first preferences for 180 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Folkestone School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for The Folkestone 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

The Folkestone School for Girls 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 The Folkestone 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 1.29 per place 233 first choices 180 places 2016/17 1.26 per place 227 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.22 per place 219 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 214 first choices 180 places 2019/20 1.24 per place 224 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.25 per place 221 first choices 177 places 2021/22 1.52 per place 280 first choices 184 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 224 first choices 180 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 219 first choices 179 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 210 first choices 178 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 197 first choices 174 places 2026/27 1.29 per place 233 first choices 180 places
First preferences per place at The Folkestone School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 233 first preferences for 180 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Folkestone 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
2015/16 180 233 173 1.29
2016/17 180 227 177 1.26
2017/18 179 219 176 1.22
2018/19 180 214 179 1.19
2019/20 180 224 177 1.24
2020/21 177 221 177 1.25
2021/22 184 280 171 1.52
2022/23 180 224 177 1.24
2023/24 179 219 178 1.22
2024/25 178 210 173 1.18
2025/26 174 197 172 1.13
2026/27 180 233 180 1.29

Places offered

180

in 2026/27

Named first choice

233

389 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.3%

180 of 233

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 180 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

890

98.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

10

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

322

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 The Folkestone 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 The Folkestone School for Girls reported 10 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.9% 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 The Folkestone School for Girls from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,053 places 1,012 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 1,002 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 1,034 on roll 2014/15 1,150 places 1,078 on roll 2015/16 1,150 places 1,072 on roll 2016/17 1,150 places 1,093 on roll 2017/18 1,053 places 1,138 on roll 2018/19 1,053 places 1,139 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 1,194 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 1,205 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,202 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,163 on roll 2024/25 1,222 places 1,151 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Folkestone School for Girls has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Folkestone School for Girls. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
9 December 2019 No fault found ADA3582

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode CT20 3RB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137837).

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.