School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Fort Pitt Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 103 families who named Fort Pitt Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 149 and 238 put it first.

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

1.60

first choices for every place available

238 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Fort Pitt Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Fort Pitt Grammar 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 Medway 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 Medway, 22.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 299 of 1,307 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 Medway.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Medway 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

Fort Pitt Grammar 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 Fort Pitt Grammar 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 1.15 per place 129 first choices 112 places 2016/17 1.39 per place 167 first choices 120 places 2017/18 1.57 per place 189 first choices 120 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 149 first choices 120 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 151 first choices 150 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 163 first choices 148 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 182 first choices 150 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 145 first choices 144 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 168 first choices 150 places 2024/25 1.57 per place 235 first choices 150 places 2025/26 1.32 per place 198 first choices 150 places 2026/27 1.6 per place 238 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at Fort Pitt Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 238 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Fort Pitt Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 112 129 92 1.15
2016/17 120 167 102 1.39
2017/18 120 189 87 1.57
2018/19 120 149 99 1.24
2019/20 150 151 100 1.01
2020/21 148 163 138 1.1
2021/22 150 182 141 1.21
2022/23 144 145 125 1.01
2023/24 150 168 139 1.12
2024/25 150 235 147 1.57
2025/26 150 198 144 1.32
2026/27 149 238 135 1.6

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

238

1,139 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

56.7%

135 of 238

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 149 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

1,029

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

749

72.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

280

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Fort Pitt Grammar 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 Fort Pitt Grammar School reported 280 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 72.8% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Fort Pitt Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,027 places 759 on roll 2011/12 1,053 places 743 on roll 2012/13 1,053 places 742 on roll 2013/14 1,053 places 777 on roll 2014/15 1,053 places 812 on roll 2015/16 1,053 places 805 on roll 2016/17 1,053 places 837 on roll 2017/18 1,053 places 814 on roll 2018/19 1,027 places 788 on roll 2020/21 1,027 places 884 on roll 2021/22 1,027 places 898 on roll 2022/23 1,027 places 893 on roll 2023/24 1,027 places 932 on roll 2024/25 1,229 places 989 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. Fort Pitt Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Fort Pitt Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
6 September 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3430

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
Medway

Postcode ME4 6TJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136337).

Other contested secondary schools in Medway

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.