School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Bede's Catholic College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 54 families who named St Bede's Catholic College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 251 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.

1.23

first choices for every place available

251 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Bede's Catholic College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Bede's Catholic 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 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

St Bede's Catholic College 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 St Bede's Catholic 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 1.11 per place 198 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 210 first choices 177 places 2017/18 1.31 per place 231 first choices 177 places 2018/19 1.1 per place 224 first choices 203 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 240 first choices 207 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 247 first choices 206 places 2021/22 1.26 per place 256 first choices 203 places 2022/23 1.17 per place 242 first choices 206 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 231 first choices 206 places 2024/25 1.37 per place 279 first choices 203 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 241 first choices 201 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 251 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at St Bede's Catholic College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 251 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Bede's Catholic College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 198 164 1.11
2016/17 177 210 168 1.19
2017/18 177 231 169 1.31
2018/19 203 224 187 1.1
2019/20 207 240 192 1.16
2020/21 206 247 195 1.2
2021/22 203 256 188 1.26
2022/23 206 242 193 1.17
2023/24 206 231 191 1.12
2024/25 203 279 192 1.37
2025/26 201 241 189 1.2
2026/27 204 251 197 1.23

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

251

430 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.5%

197 of 251

Offers to families outside the council

28%

58 of 204 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

1,035

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,037

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Bede's Catholic 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 St Bede's Catholic 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Bede's Catholic College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 850 places 939 on roll 2012/13 876 places 913 on roll 2013/14 876 places 943 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 1,010 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 1,036 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 1,046 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 1,034 on roll 2018/19 1,235 places 1,086 on roll 2020/21 1,235 places 1,175 on roll 2021/22 1,235 places 1,223 on roll 2022/23 1,235 places 1,265 on roll 2023/24 1,235 places 1,299 on roll 2024/25 1,235 places 1,313 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. St Bede's Catholic College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Bede's Catholic College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
18 August 2016 Arrangements did not comply ADA3149

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

Postcode BS11 0SU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137627).

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.