School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 140 families who named Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 201 and 336 put it first.

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

1.67

first choices for every place available

336 first preferences for 201 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical 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

Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical 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 Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical 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 1.29 per place 217 first choices 168 places 2016/17 1.32 per place 246 first choices 186 places 2017/18 1.35 per place 271 first choices 201 places 2018/19 1.35 per place 275 first choices 203 places 2019/20 1.5 per place 302 first choices 202 places 2020/21 1.61 per place 326 first choices 203 places 2021/22 1.74 per place 347 first choices 200 places 2022/23 1.27 per place 258 first choices 203 places 2023/24 1.65 per place 331 first choices 201 places 2024/25 1.6 per place 325 first choices 203 places 2025/26 1.71 per place 397 first choices 232 places 2026/27 1.67 per place 336 first choices 201 places
First preferences per place at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 336 first preferences for 201 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 168 217 165 1.29
2016/17 186 246 185 1.32
2017/18 201 271 195 1.35
2018/19 203 275 192 1.35
2019/20 202 302 196 1.5
2020/21 203 326 193 1.61
2021/22 200 347 191 1.74
2022/23 203 258 191 1.27
2023/24 201 331 197 1.65
2024/25 203 325 195 1.6
2025/26 232 397 226 1.71
2026/27 201 336 196 1.67

Places offered

201

in 2026/27

Named first choice

336

740 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

58.3%

196 of 336

Offers to families outside the council

3%

7 of 201 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

1,042

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,078

103.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

36

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

350

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 Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical 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 Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical 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 Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,199 places 1,171 on roll 2011/12 1,392 places 1,198 on roll 2012/13 1,392 places 1,209 on roll 2013/14 1,392 places 1,196 on roll 2014/15 1,392 places 1,192 on roll 2015/16 1,392 places 1,210 on roll 2016/17 1,392 places 1,252 on roll 2017/18 1,392 places 1,296 on roll 2018/19 1,392 places 1,356 on roll 2020/21 1,392 places 1,429 on roll 2021/22 1,392 places 1,460 on roll 2022/23 1,392 places 1,475 on roll 2023/24 1,392 places 1,503 on roll 2024/25 1,392 places 1,523 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. Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 July 2016 Arrangements did not comply ADA3108

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 ME1 3EL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136662).

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.