School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Catherine's Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 30 families who named St Catherine's Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: 158 put it first and 128 of them were offered one.

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

30

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

158 first preferences for 208 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Catherine's Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Catherine's Catholic 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 Bexley 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 Bexley, 12.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 449 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 Bexley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bexley 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 Catherine's Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 4 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 St Catherine's Catholic 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 1.08 per place 225 first choices 209 places 2016/17 1.08 per place 225 first choices 209 places 2017/18 0.87 per place 180 first choices 208 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 206 first choices 209 places 2019/20 1 per place 210 first choices 210 places 2020/21 0.79 per place 164 first choices 207 places 2021/22 0.5 per place 103 first choices 204 places 2022/23 0.66 per place 139 first choices 210 places 2023/24 0.66 per place 137 first choices 207 places 2024/25 0.72 per place 153 first choices 212 places 2025/26 0.58 per place 119 first choices 204 places 2026/27 0.76 per place 158 first choices 208 places
First preferences per place at St Catherine's Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 158 first preferences for 208 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Catherine's Catholic School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 209 225 166 1.08
2016/17 209 225 158 1.08
2017/18 208 180 151 0.87
2018/19 209 206 146 0.99
2019/20 210 210 153 1
2020/21 207 164 153 0.79
2021/22 204 103 103 0.5
2022/23 210 139 139 0.66
2023/24 207 137 137 0.66
2024/25 212 153 153 0.72
2025/26 204 119 119 0.58
2026/27 208 158 128 0.76

Places offered

208

in 2026/27

Named first choice

158

454 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81%

128 of 158

Offers to families outside the council

21%

44 of 208 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

1,170

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,039

88.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

131

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Catherine's Catholic 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 Catherine's Catholic School reported 131 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.8% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Catherine's Catholic School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,050 places 1,069 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 1,057 on roll 2013/14 1,080 places 1,064 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,053 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,050 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,046 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,037 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,043 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,034 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,010 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,028 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,038 on roll 2024/25 1,170 places 1,039 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bexley

Postcode DA6 7QJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137681).

Other contested secondary schools in Bexley

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.