School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Thornleigh Salesian College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Thornleigh Salesian College as their first choice did not get a place: 241 put it first and 227 of them were offered one.

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

14

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

241 first preferences for 260 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Thornleigh Salesian College

There is no published appeal success rate for Thornleigh Salesian College, 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

Thornleigh Salesian College turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Thornleigh Salesian College, 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 1.03 per place 233 first choices 226 places 2016/17 1.15 per place 262 first choices 227 places 2017/18 1.08 per place 290 first choices 269 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 299 first choices 269 places 2019/20 1.3 per place 350 first choices 270 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 316 first choices 279 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 272 first choices 266 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 276 first choices 279 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 298 first choices 278 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 278 first choices 274 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 289 first choices 262 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 241 first choices 260 places
First preferences per place at Thornleigh Salesian College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 241 first preferences for 260 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Thornleigh Salesian College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 226 233 218 1.03
2016/17 227 262 218 1.15
2017/18 269 290 256 1.08
2018/19 269 299 258 1.11
2019/20 270 350 252 1.3
2020/21 279 316 264 1.13
2021/22 266 272 247 1.02
2022/23 279 276 253 0.99
2023/24 278 298 264 1.07
2024/25 274 278 243 1.01
2025/26 262 289 246 1.1
2026/27 260 241 227 0.93

Places offered

260

in 2026/27

Named first choice

241

634 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.2%

227 of 241

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 260 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

1,264

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,349

106.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

85

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

343

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 Thornleigh Salesian College 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 Thornleigh Salesian College 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 Thornleigh Salesian College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,490 places 1,427 on roll 2010/11 1,509 places 1,421 on roll 2011/12 1,500 places 1,475 on roll 2012/13 1,500 places 1,450 on roll 2013/14 1,500 places 1,408 on roll 2014/15 1,509 places 1,415 on roll 2015/16 1,509 places 1,430 on roll 2016/17 1,509 places 1,411 on roll 2017/18 1,509 places 1,458 on roll 2018/19 1,508 places 1,488 on roll 2020/21 1,693 places 1,589 on roll 2021/22 1,693 places 1,613 on roll 2022/23 1,693 places 1,581 on roll 2023/24 1,693 places 1,555 on roll 2024/25 1,607 places 1,569 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. Thornleigh Salesian College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Thornleigh Salesian College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 October 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2804

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
Bolton

Postcode BL1 6PQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 105264).

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.