School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Howard School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named The Howard School as their first choice did not get a place: 229 put it first and 210 of them were offered one.

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

19

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

229 first preferences for 243 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Howard School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Howard 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

The Howard School turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Howard 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 0.92 per place 234 first choices 253 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 241 first choices 255 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 243 first choices 248 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 219 first choices 250 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 246 first choices 263 places 2020/21 0.86 per place 231 first choices 270 places 2021/22 0.74 per place 222 first choices 302 places 2022/23 0.6 per place 166 first choices 277 places 2023/24 0.75 per place 176 first choices 235 places 2024/25 0.89 per place 222 first choices 250 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 241 first choices 246 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 229 first choices 243 places
First preferences per place at The Howard School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 229 first preferences for 243 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Howard School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 253 234 212 0.92
2016/17 255 241 217 0.95
2017/18 248 243 212 0.98
2018/19 250 219 204 0.88
2019/20 263 246 226 0.94
2020/21 270 231 226 0.86
2021/22 302 222 222 0.74
2022/23 277 166 166 0.6
2023/24 235 176 176 0.75
2024/25 250 222 217 0.89
2025/26 246 241 216 0.98
2026/27 243 229 210 0.94

Places offered

243

in 2026/27

Named first choice

229

523 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.7%

210 of 229

Offers to families outside the council

3%

8 of 243 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

1,469

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,274

86.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

195

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

256

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 Howard 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 Howard School reported 195 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.7% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Howard School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,725 places 1,510 on roll 2015/16 1,725 places 1,505 on roll 2016/17 1,725 places 1,452 on roll 2017/18 1,725 places 1,404 on roll 2018/19 1,725 places 1,452 on roll 2020/21 1,725 places 1,511 on roll 2021/22 1,725 places 1,484 on roll 2022/23 1,725 places 1,508 on roll 2023/24 1,725 places 1,538 on roll 2024/25 1,725 places 1,519 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
Medway

Postcode ME8 0BX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141466).

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.