School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cardinal Newman Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 146 families who named Cardinal Newman Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 346 and 484 put it first.

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

1.40

first choices for every place available

484 first preferences for 346 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cardinal Newman Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for Cardinal Newman Catholic 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 Brighton and Hove 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 Brighton and Hove, 30.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 117 of 389 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 Brighton and Hove.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Brighton and Hove 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

Cardinal Newman Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Cardinal Newman Catholic 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 1.08 per place 381 first choices 354 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 375 first choices 360 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 361 first choices 357 places 2018/19 1.06 per place 377 first choices 354 places 2019/20 1.3 per place 448 first choices 344 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 331 first choices 343 places 2021/22 1.16 per place 409 first choices 354 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 377 first choices 353 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 449 first choices 358 places 2024/25 1.3 per place 461 first choices 355 places 2025/26 1.47 per place 509 first choices 346 places 2026/27 1.4 per place 484 first choices 346 places
First preferences per place at Cardinal Newman Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 484 first preferences for 346 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cardinal Newman Catholic School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 354 381 342 1.08
2016/17 360 375 338 1.04
2017/18 357 361 328 1.01
2018/19 354 377 338 1.06
2019/20 344 448 332 1.3
2020/21 343 331 298 0.97
2021/22 354 409 334 1.16
2022/23 353 377 338 1.07
2023/24 358 449 349 1.25
2024/25 355 461 342 1.3
2025/26 346 509 336 1.47
2026/27 346 484 338 1.4

Places offered

346

in 2026/27

Named first choice

484

1,191 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.8%

338 of 484

Offers to families outside the council

9%

32 of 346 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

2,057

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,857

90.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

200

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

489

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 Cardinal Newman Catholic 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 Cardinal Newman Catholic School reported 200 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.3% 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 Cardinal Newman Catholic School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,350 2,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,843 places 2,091 on roll 2010/11 1,985 places 2,096 on roll 2011/12 1,985 places 2,107 on roll 2012/13 2,077 places 2,175 on roll 2013/14 2,077 places 2,211 on roll 2014/15 2,261 places 2,222 on roll 2015/16 2,275 places 2,252 on roll 2016/17 2,279 places 2,267 on roll 2017/18 2,264 places 2,248 on roll 2018/19 2,264 places 2,283 on roll 2020/21 2,289 places 2,444 on roll 2021/22 2,289 places 2,446 on roll 2022/23 2,289 places 2,487 on roll 2023/24 2,289 places 2,484 on roll 2024/25 2,546 places 2,622 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. Cardinal Newman Catholic School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Cardinal Newman Catholic School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
28 November 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2812

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
Brighton and Hove

Postcode BN3 6ND. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 114611).

Other contested secondary schools in Brighton and Hove

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.