School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Southend High School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 110 families who named Southend High School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 217 and 271 put it first.

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

1.25

first choices for every place available

271 first preferences for 217 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Southend High School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Southend High 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 Southend-on-Sea 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 Southend-on-Sea, 4.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 13 of 277 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 Southend-on-Sea.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Southend-on-Sea 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

Southend High School for Girls turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 9 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 Southend High 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 0.9 per place 162 first choices 180 places 2016/17 1.25 per place 222 first choices 178 places 2017/18 1.28 per place 229 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.36 per place 240 first choices 176 places 2019/20 1.51 per place 259 first choices 172 places 2020/21 1.58 per place 223 first choices 141 places 2021/22 1.64 per place 292 first choices 178 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 173 first choices 177 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 226 first choices 172 places 2024/25 1.4 per place 226 first choices 161 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 217 first choices 222 places 2026/27 1.25 per place 271 first choices 217 places
First preferences per place at Southend High School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 271 first preferences for 217 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Southend High 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
2015/16 180 162 126 0.9
2016/17 178 222 144 1.25
2017/18 179 229 134 1.28
2018/19 176 240 145 1.36
2019/20 172 259 139 1.51
2020/21 141 223 133 1.58
2021/22 178 292 109 1.64
2022/23 177 173 115 0.98
2023/24 172 226 119 1.31
2024/25 161 226 112 1.4
2025/26 222 217 144 0.98
2026/27 217 271 161 1.25

Places offered

217

in 2026/27

Named first choice

271

943 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

59.4%

161 of 271

Offers to families outside the council

63%

136 of 217 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

1,038

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

913

88% of capacity

Unfilled places

125

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Southend High 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 Southend High School for Girls reported 125 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88% 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 Southend High School for Girls from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,058 places 1,031 on roll 2011/12 1,077 places 1,039 on roll 2012/13 1,077 places 1,071 on roll 2013/14 1,077 places 1,060 on roll 2014/15 1,116 places 1,029 on roll 2015/16 1,116 places 1,053 on roll 2016/17 1,116 places 1,097 on roll 2017/18 1,116 places 1,130 on roll 2018/19 1,269 places 1,184 on roll 2020/21 1,269 places 1,180 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,249 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,242 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,233 on roll 2024/25 1,338 places 1,247 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. Southend High School for Girls has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Southend High School for Girls. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
24 October 2019 No fault found ADA3586

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
Southend-on-Sea

Postcode SS2 4UZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136444).

Other contested secondary schools in Southend-on-Sea

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.