School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Paul's School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 106 families who named St Paul's School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 169 and 270 put it first.

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

1.60

first choices for every place available

270 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Paul's School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for St Paul's 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 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

St Paul's 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 11 of those years. In the other 1 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 Paul's 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 0.97 per place 160 first choices 165 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 197 first choices 165 places 2017/18 1.34 per place 214 first choices 160 places 2018/19 1.42 per place 236 first choices 166 places 2019/20 1.51 per place 240 first choices 159 places 2020/21 1.52 per place 249 first choices 164 places 2021/22 1.56 per place 257 first choices 165 places 2022/23 1.26 per place 206 first choices 164 places 2023/24 1.44 per place 238 first choices 165 places 2024/25 1.44 per place 236 first choices 164 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 215 first choices 166 places 2026/27 1.6 per place 270 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at St Paul's School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 270 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Paul's 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
2015/16 165 160 114 0.97
2016/17 165 197 127 1.19
2017/18 160 214 129 1.34
2018/19 166 236 146 1.42
2019/20 159 240 129 1.51
2020/21 164 249 150 1.52
2021/22 165 257 155 1.56
2022/23 164 206 146 1.26
2023/24 165 238 149 1.44
2024/25 164 236 148 1.44
2025/26 166 215 149 1.3
2026/27 169 270 164 1.6

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

270

796 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

60.7%

164 of 270

Offers to families outside the council

21%

36 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

895

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

841

94% of capacity

Unfilled places

54

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

180

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 Paul's 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 St Paul's School for Girls reported 54 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Paul's School for Girls from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 906 places 982 on roll 2010/11 906 places 982 on roll 2011/12 906 places 968 on roll 2012/13 906 places 954 on roll 2013/14 906 places 952 on roll 2014/15 906 places 954 on roll 2015/16 964 places 989 on roll 2016/17 964 places 997 on roll 2017/18 906 places 995 on roll 2018/19 906 places 982 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 1,006 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 1,006 on roll 2022/23 1,075 places 1,030 on roll 2023/24 1,075 places 1,014 on roll 2024/25 1,075 places 1,044 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. St Paul's School for Girls has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Paul's School for Girls. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 October 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2797

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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Birmingham

Postcode B16 9SL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 103531).

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.