School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bishop Walsh Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named Bishop Walsh Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 169 and 177 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

177 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bishop Walsh Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bishop Walsh 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 Birmingham 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 Birmingham, 10.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 245 of 2,271 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 Birmingham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Birmingham 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

Bishop Walsh Catholic 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 Bishop Walsh 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 1.13 per place 186 first choices 165 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 178 first choices 149 places 2017/18 1.32 per place 198 first choices 150 places 2018/19 1.41 per place 210 first choices 149 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 192 first choices 146 places 2020/21 1.19 per place 203 first choices 170 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 201 first choices 170 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 192 first choices 171 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 191 first choices 169 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 192 first choices 169 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 176 first choices 170 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 177 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at Bishop Walsh Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 177 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bishop Walsh 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
2015/16 165 186 142 1.13
2016/17 149 178 128 1.19
2017/18 150 198 136 1.32
2018/19 149 210 132 1.41
2019/20 146 192 130 1.32
2020/21 170 203 159 1.19
2021/22 170 201 158 1.18
2022/23 171 192 147 1.12
2023/24 169 191 152 1.13
2024/25 169 192 153 1.14
2025/26 170 176 148 1.04
2026/27 169 177 148 1.05

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

177

1,220 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.6%

148 of 177

Offers to families outside the council

3%

5 of 169 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

870

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

854

98.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

16

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

216

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 Bishop Walsh 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 Bishop Walsh Catholic School reported 16 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.2% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bishop Walsh Catholic School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,067 places 974 on roll 2014/15 1,067 places 1,005 on roll 2015/16 1,067 places 1,017 on roll 2016/17 1,067 places 1,037 on roll 2017/18 1,067 places 1,003 on roll 2018/19 1,067 places 1,008 on roll 2020/21 997 places 1,045 on roll 2021/22 1,080 places 1,064 on roll 2022/23 1,067 places 1,022 on roll 2023/24 1,067 places 1,050 on roll 2024/25 1,086 places 1,080 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. Bishop Walsh Catholic School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Bishop Walsh Catholic School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 October 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2795

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
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Birmingham

Postcode B76 1QT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140524).

Other contested secondary schools in Birmingham

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.