School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Westlands School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 38 families who named Westlands School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 282 and 294 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

294 first preferences for 282 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Westlands School

There is no published appeal success rate for Westlands 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

Westlands 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 Westlands 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 1.02 per place 287 first choices 280 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 319 first choices 279 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 301 first choices 275 places 2018/19 1.15 per place 322 first choices 281 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 360 first choices 321 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 358 first choices 317 places 2021/22 1.1 per place 354 first choices 322 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 303 first choices 297 places 2023/24 1.55 per place 439 first choices 283 places 2024/25 1.46 per place 378 first choices 259 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 300 first choices 276 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 294 first choices 282 places
First preferences per place at Westlands School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 294 first preferences for 282 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Westlands School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 280 287 221 1.02
2016/17 279 319 228 1.14
2017/18 275 301 234 1.09
2018/19 281 322 230 1.15
2019/20 321 360 267 1.12
2020/21 317 358 262 1.13
2021/22 322 354 244 1.1
2022/23 297 303 245 1.02
2023/24 283 439 255 1.55
2024/25 259 378 233 1.46
2025/26 276 300 250 1.09
2026/27 282 294 256 1.04

Places offered

282

in 2026/27

Named first choice

294

1,007 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.1%

256 of 294

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 282 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

1,485

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,531

103.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

46

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Westlands 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 Westlands 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Westlands School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,858 places 1,708 on roll 2011/12 1,741 places 1,688 on roll 2012/13 1,683 places 1,686 on roll 2013/14 1,685 places 1,723 on roll 2014/15 1,685 places 1,703 on roll 2015/16 1,685 places 1,647 on roll 2016/17 1,685 places 1,622 on roll 2017/18 1,685 places 1,637 on roll 2018/19 1,685 places 1,613 on roll 2020/21 1,775 places 1,725 on roll 2021/22 1,775 places 1,779 on roll 2022/23 1,775 places 1,765 on roll 2023/24 1,814 places 1,754 on roll 2024/25 1,735 places 1,733 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 ME10 1PF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136286).

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.