School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Joseph's RC High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named St Joseph's RC High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 205 and 218 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

218 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Joseph's RC High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Joseph's RC 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 Joseph's RC High School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at St Joseph's RC 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 1.16 per place 182 first choices 157 places 2016/17 1.06 per place 182 first choices 171 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 200 first choices 180 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 174 first choices 207 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 179 first choices 204 places 2020/21 0.83 per place 172 first choices 206 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 188 first choices 207 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 195 first choices 206 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 228 first choices 210 places 2024/25 1 per place 205 first choices 205 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 209 first choices 212 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 218 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at St Joseph's RC High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 218 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Joseph's RC 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
2015/16 157 182 155 1.16
2016/17 171 182 170 1.06
2017/18 180 200 174 1.11
2018/19 207 174 172 0.84
2019/20 204 179 176 0.88
2020/21 206 172 169 0.83
2021/22 207 188 186 0.91
2022/23 206 195 181 0.95
2023/24 210 228 199 1.09
2024/25 205 205 192 1
2025/26 212 209 201 0.99
2026/27 205 218 201 1.06

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

218

529 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.2%

201 of 218

Offers to families outside the council

11%

22 of 205 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

1,045

99.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

5

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 Joseph's RC 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 Joseph's RC High School reported 5 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.5% 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 Joseph's RC 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 2009/10 855 places 887 on roll 2010/11 882 places 882 on roll 2011/12 855 places 871 on roll 2012/13 855 places 864 on roll 2013/14 855 places 858 on roll 2014/15 855 places 841 on roll 2015/16 855 places 838 on roll 2016/17 855 places 828 on roll 2017/18 855 places 844 on roll 2018/19 855 places 880 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 960 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,011 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,041 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,039 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,045 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bolton

Postcode BL6 6HW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 105262).

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.