School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Rainham School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 37 families who named Rainham School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 263 and 265 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

265 first preferences for 263 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Rainham School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Rainham 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 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

Rainham School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 3 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 Rainham 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 0.96 per place 258 first choices 268 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 259 first choices 270 places 2017/18 0.77 per place 208 first choices 269 places 2018/19 0.86 per place 232 first choices 269 places 2019/20 1.1 per place 293 first choices 267 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 295 first choices 300 places 2021/22 0.77 per place 236 first choices 306 places 2022/23 0.74 per place 201 first choices 270 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 206 first choices 270 places 2024/25 0.82 per place 221 first choices 269 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 259 first choices 268 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 265 first choices 263 places
First preferences per place at Rainham School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 265 first preferences for 263 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Rainham 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
2015/16 268 258 221 0.96
2016/17 270 259 235 0.96
2017/18 269 208 207 0.77
2018/19 269 232 215 0.86
2019/20 267 293 230 1.1
2020/21 300 295 259 0.98
2021/22 306 236 236 0.77
2022/23 270 201 201 0.74
2023/24 270 206 205 0.76
2024/25 269 221 207 0.82
2025/26 268 259 224 0.97
2026/27 263 265 228 1.01

Places offered

263

in 2026/27

Named first choice

265

574 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86%

228 of 265

Offers to families outside the council

4%

11 of 263 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

1,549

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,346

86.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

203

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

247

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 Rainham 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 Rainham School for Girls reported 203 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.9% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Rainham School for Girls from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,550 places 1,525 on roll 2011/12 1,597 places 1,535 on roll 2012/13 1,597 places 1,571 on roll 2013/14 1,597 places 1,564 on roll 2014/15 1,597 places 1,575 on roll 2015/16 1,597 places 1,565 on roll 2016/17 1,597 places 1,611 on roll 2017/18 1,597 places 1,642 on roll 2018/19 1,597 places 1,620 on roll 2020/21 1,627 places 1,716 on roll 2021/22 1,627 places 1,690 on roll 2022/23 1,627 places 1,662 on roll 2023/24 1,627 places 1,627 on roll 2024/25 1,796 places 1,617 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. Rainham School for Girls has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Rainham School for Girls. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
17 May 2022 Arrangements did not comply ADA3905

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
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Medway

Postcode ME8 0BX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136456).

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.