School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bristol Cathedral Choir School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 94 families who named Bristol Cathedral Choir School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 141 and 214 put it first.

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

1.52

first choices for every place available

214 first preferences for 141 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bristol Cathedral Choir School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bristol Cathedral Choir 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 Bristol, City of 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 Bristol, City of, 28% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 171 of 610 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 Bristol, City of.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bristol, City of 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

Bristol Cathedral Choir 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 Bristol Cathedral Choir School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.6 3.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.51 per place 276 first choices 110 places 2016/17 2.52 per place 290 first choices 115 places 2017/18 2.54 per place 368 first choices 145 places 2018/19 3.01 per place 434 first choices 144 places 2019/20 2.69 per place 384 first choices 143 places 2020/21 2.99 per place 409 first choices 137 places 2021/22 2.51 per place 369 first choices 147 places 2022/23 2.36 per place 326 first choices 138 places 2023/24 2.33 per place 328 first choices 141 places 2024/25 2.01 per place 279 first choices 139 places 2025/26 1.82 per place 247 first choices 136 places 2026/27 1.52 per place 214 first choices 141 places
First preferences per place at Bristol Cathedral Choir School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 214 first preferences for 141 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bristol Cathedral Choir School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 110 276 89 2.51
2016/17 115 290 101 2.52
2017/18 145 368 114 2.54
2018/19 144 434 123 3.01
2019/20 143 384 116 2.69
2020/21 137 409 130 2.99
2021/22 147 369 120 2.51
2022/23 138 326 124 2.36
2023/24 141 328 128 2.33
2024/25 139 279 124 2.01
2025/26 136 247 130 1.82
2026/27 141 214 120 1.52

Places offered

141

in 2026/27

Named first choice

214

876 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

56.1%

120 of 214

Offers to families outside the council

11%

15 of 141 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

765

102% of capacity

Over its capacity by

15

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Bristol Cathedral Choir 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 Bristol Cathedral Choir 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 Bristol Cathedral Choir School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 685 places 494 on roll 2010/11 685 places 538 on roll 2011/12 680 places 613 on roll 2012/13 680 places 676 on roll 2013/14 680 places 734 on roll 2014/15 680 places 765 on roll 2015/16 750 places 779 on roll 2016/17 750 places 826 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 978 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,065 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,144 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,186 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,178 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,172 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,186 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. Bristol Cathedral Choir School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in each of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Bristol Cathedral Choir School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 February 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2832
5 March 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2573

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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bristol, City of

Postcode BS1 5TS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135575).

Other contested secondary schools in Bristol, City of

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.