School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Michael's Catholic Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 58 families who named St Michael's Catholic Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 127 and 177 put it first.

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

1.39

first choices for every place available

177 first preferences for 127 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Michael's Catholic Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Michael's Catholic 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 Barnet 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 Barnet, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 61 of 405 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 Barnet.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Barnet 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

St Michael's Catholic 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 St Michael's Catholic 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 1.49 per place 142 first choices 95 places 2016/17 1.44 per place 137 first choices 95 places 2017/18 1.47 per place 141 first choices 96 places 2018/19 1.6 per place 154 first choices 96 places 2019/20 1.62 per place 156 first choices 96 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 172 first choices 128 places 2021/22 1.77 per place 227 first choices 128 places 2022/23 1.49 per place 191 first choices 128 places 2023/24 1.33 per place 170 first choices 128 places 2024/25 1.57 per place 201 first choices 128 places 2025/26 1.43 per place 181 first choices 127 places 2026/27 1.39 per place 177 first choices 127 places
First preferences per place at St Michael's Catholic Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 177 first preferences for 127 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Michael's Catholic 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 95 142 85 1.49
2016/17 95 137 84 1.44
2017/18 96 141 89 1.47
2018/19 96 154 83 1.6
2019/20 96 156 93 1.62
2020/21 128 172 121 1.34
2021/22 128 227 116 1.77
2022/23 128 191 124 1.49
2023/24 128 170 119 1.33
2024/25 128 201 120 1.57
2025/26 127 181 118 1.43
2026/27 127 177 119 1.39

Places offered

127

in 2026/27

Named first choice

177

288 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67.2%

119 of 177

Offers to families outside the council

62%

79 of 127 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

571

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

639

111.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

68

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

280

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 St Michael's Catholic 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 St Michael's Catholic Grammar 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Michael's Catholic Grammar School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 767 places 751 on roll 2010/11 767 places 750 on roll 2011/12 767 places 757 on roll 2012/13 767 places 755 on roll 2013/14 767 places 748 on roll 2014/15 767 places 753 on roll 2015/16 767 places 769 on roll 2016/17 767 places 774 on roll 2017/18 767 places 724 on roll 2018/19 767 places 705 on roll 2020/21 767 places 814 on roll 2021/22 920 places 855 on roll 2022/23 920 places 850 on roll 2023/24 920 places 855 on roll 2024/25 851 places 891 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barnet

Postcode N12 7NJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 101361).

Other contested secondary schools in Barnet

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.