School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St James's Church of England High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 122 families who named St James's Church of England High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 197 and 315 put it first.

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

1.60

first choices for every place available

315 first preferences for 197 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St James's Church of England High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St James's Church of England High 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 Bolton 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 Bolton, 22% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 192 of 873 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 Bolton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bolton 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 James's Church of England High 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 James's Church of England High 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 1.63 per place 326 first choices 200 places 2016/17 1.81 per place 365 first choices 202 places 2017/18 1.87 per place 388 first choices 208 places 2018/19 1.89 per place 393 first choices 208 places 2019/20 1.72 per place 379 first choices 220 places 2020/21 1.79 per place 366 first choices 204 places 2021/22 1.8 per place 376 first choices 209 places 2022/23 1.5 per place 306 first choices 204 places 2023/24 1.71 per place 355 first choices 207 places 2024/25 1.81 per place 358 first choices 198 places 2025/26 1.79 per place 359 first choices 200 places 2026/27 1.6 per place 315 first choices 197 places
First preferences per place at St James's Church of England High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 315 first preferences for 197 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St James's Church of England High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 200 326 198 1.63
2016/17 202 365 189 1.81
2017/18 208 388 205 1.87
2018/19 208 393 200 1.89
2019/20 220 379 209 1.72
2020/21 204 366 200 1.79
2021/22 209 376 204 1.8
2022/23 204 306 189 1.5
2023/24 207 355 204 1.71
2024/25 198 358 197 1.81
2025/26 200 359 196 1.79
2026/27 197 315 193 1.6

Places offered

197

in 2026/27

Named first choice

315

732 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.3%

193 of 315

Offers to families outside the council

11%

21 of 197 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 105266.

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

1,053

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

reported as full or beyond

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 James's Church of England High 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 James's Church of England High 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 James's Church of England High School 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 1,000 places 1,032 on roll 2010/11 1,028 places 1,022 on roll 2011/12 1,030 places 1,020 on roll 2012/13 1,030 places 1,022 on roll 2013/14 1,030 places 1,020 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,027 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,029 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,043 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,046 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,059 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,064 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,053 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,052 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,051 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,053 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 James's Church of England High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St James's Church of England High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
22 August 2013 Arrangements did not comply ADA2434

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
Bolton

Postcode BL4 9RU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144046).

Other contested secondary schools in Bolton

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.