School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Maplesden Noakes School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named The Maplesden Noakes School as their first choice did not get a place: 219 put it first and 183 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.

36

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

219 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Maplesden Noakes School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Maplesden Noakes 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

The Maplesden Noakes School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 6 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 The Maplesden Noakes 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 0.88 per place 157 first choices 179 places 2016/17 0.59 per place 106 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.04 per place 188 first choices 181 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 227 first choices 209 places 2019/20 1.1 per place 227 first choices 207 places 2020/21 1.21 per place 246 first choices 203 places 2021/22 0.72 per place 170 first choices 237 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 233 first choices 239 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 214 first choices 236 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 233 first choices 238 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 222 first choices 239 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 219 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at The Maplesden Noakes School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 219 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Maplesden Noakes School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 179 157 124 0.88
2016/17 180 106 96 0.59
2017/18 181 188 111 1.04
2018/19 209 227 147 1.09
2019/20 207 227 158 1.1
2020/21 203 246 158 1.21
2021/22 237 170 158 0.72
2022/23 239 233 197 0.97
2023/24 236 214 189 0.91
2024/25 238 233 194 0.98
2025/26 239 222 199 0.93
2026/27 236 219 183 0.93

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

219

954 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.6%

183 of 219

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 236 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,157

96.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

43

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Maplesden Noakes 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 The Maplesden Noakes School reported 43 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.4% 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 Maplesden Noakes School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,040 places 1,003 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 1,025 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 1,084 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 1,065 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 1,085 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 1,139 on roll 2017/18 1,067 places 1,169 on roll 2018/19 1,067 places 1,178 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 1,244 on roll 2021/22 1,450 places 1,276 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,357 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,404 on roll 2024/25 1,500 places 1,415 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kent

Postcode ME16 0TJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137833).

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.