School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Mary's Catholic Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 53 families who named St Mary's Catholic Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 245 put it first.

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

1.20

first choices for every place available

245 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Mary's Catholic Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Mary's Catholic Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Blackpool 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 Blackpool, 25.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 68 of 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 Blackpool.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Blackpool 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 Mary's Catholic Academy 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 Mary's Catholic Academy, 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 1.27 per place 250 first choices 197 places 2016/17 1.4 per place 295 first choices 210 places 2017/18 1.13 per place 234 first choices 207 places 2018/19 1.29 per place 270 first choices 210 places 2019/20 1.37 per place 286 first choices 209 places 2020/21 1.41 per place 294 first choices 208 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 252 first choices 208 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 258 first choices 208 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 258 first choices 210 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 246 first choices 208 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 268 first choices 227 places 2026/27 1.2 per place 245 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at St Mary's Catholic Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 245 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Mary's Catholic Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 197 250 188 1.27
2016/17 210 295 201 1.4
2017/18 207 234 196 1.13
2018/19 210 270 201 1.29
2019/20 209 286 206 1.37
2020/21 208 294 204 1.41
2021/22 208 252 199 1.21
2022/23 208 258 206 1.24
2023/24 210 258 201 1.23
2024/25 208 246 195 1.18
2025/26 227 268 218 1.18
2026/27 204 245 192 1.2

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

245

453 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.4%

192 of 245

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 204 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,055

100.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

5

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

230

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 Mary's Catholic Academy 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 Mary's Catholic Academy 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Mary's Catholic Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,200 places 1,201 on roll 2015/16 1,220 places 1,180 on roll 2016/17 1,220 places 1,187 on roll 2017/18 1,220 places 1,163 on roll 2018/19 1,280 places 1,188 on roll 2020/21 1,280 places 1,217 on roll 2021/22 1,280 places 1,204 on roll 2022/23 1,280 places 1,196 on roll 2023/24 1,280 places 1,204 on roll 2024/25 1,280 places 1,173 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 Mary's Catholic Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Mary's Catholic Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
4 November 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2802

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
Blackpool

Postcode FY3 7EQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141257).

Other contested secondary schools in Blackpool

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.