School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School as their first choice did not get a place: 180 put it first and 166 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 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

180 first preferences for 184 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive 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 Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 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 Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, 24.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 163 of 669 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 Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 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 Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School 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 St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive 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 0.91 per place 216 first choices 238 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 262 first choices 239 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 274 first choices 239 places 2018/19 1.38 per place 329 first choices 238 places 2019/20 1.55 per place 366 first choices 236 places 2020/21 1.3 per place 300 first choices 230 places 2021/22 1.16 per place 204 first choices 176 places 2022/23 1.33 per place 231 first choices 174 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 198 first choices 177 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 199 first choices 175 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 179 first choices 171 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 180 first choices 184 places
First preferences per place at St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 180 first preferences for 184 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 238 216 206 0.91
2016/17 239 262 211 1.1
2017/18 239 274 221 1.15
2018/19 238 329 227 1.38
2019/20 236 366 220 1.55
2020/21 230 300 211 1.3
2021/22 176 204 151 1.16
2022/23 174 231 165 1.33
2023/24 177 198 160 1.12
2024/25 175 199 160 1.14
2025/26 171 179 163 1.05
2026/27 184 180 166 0.98

Places offered

184

in 2026/27

Named first choice

180

672 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.2%

166 of 180

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 184 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

1,574

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,641

104.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

67

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

360

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 Peter's Catholic Comprehensive 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 Peter's Catholic Comprehensive 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,632 places 1,597 on roll 2012/13 1,632 places 1,566 on roll 2013/14 1,650 places 1,531 on roll 2014/15 1,692 places 1,547 on roll 2015/16 1,692 places 1,601 on roll 2016/17 1,650 places 1,683 on roll 2017/18 1,650 places 1,740 on roll 2018/19 2,050 places 1,826 on roll 2020/21 1,942 places 1,983 on roll 2021/22 1,934 places 1,964 on roll 2022/23 1,934 places 1,941 on roll 2023/24 1,934 places 1,923 on roll 2024/25 1,934 places 1,947 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

Postcode BH6 4AH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137349).

Other contested secondary schools in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

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.