School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 39 families who named St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 141 and 171 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.

1.21

first choices for every place available

171 first preferences for 141 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Bernadette Catholic Secondary 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

St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 3 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at St Bernadette Catholic Secondary 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 1.01 per place 146 first choices 145 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 132 first choices 149 places 2017/18 0.76 per place 113 first choices 148 places 2018/19 0.77 per place 116 first choices 150 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 131 first choices 149 places 2020/21 0.67 per place 92 first choices 137 places 2021/22 0.84 per place 125 first choices 149 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 131 first choices 146 places 2023/24 0.8 per place 119 first choices 148 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 143 first choices 145 places 2025/26 1.16 per place 167 first choices 144 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 171 first choices 141 places
First preferences per place at St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 171 first preferences for 141 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 145 146 132 1.01
2016/17 149 132 131 0.89
2017/18 148 113 113 0.76
2018/19 150 116 112 0.77
2019/20 149 131 110 0.88
2020/21 137 92 92 0.67
2021/22 149 125 112 0.84
2022/23 146 131 110 0.9
2023/24 148 119 113 0.8
2024/25 145 143 134 0.99
2025/26 144 167 135 1.16
2026/27 141 171 132 1.21

Places offered

141

in 2026/27

Named first choice

171

405 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.2%

132 of 171

Offers to families outside the council

4%

5 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

753

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 Bernadette Catholic Secondary 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 Bernadette Catholic Secondary 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 St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 750 places 754 on roll 2010/11 750 places 748 on roll 2011/12 750 places 744 on roll 2012/13 750 places 722 on roll 2013/14 750 places 726 on roll 2014/15 750 places 726 on roll 2015/16 750 places 737 on roll 2016/17 750 places 722 on roll 2017/18 750 places 715 on roll 2018/19 750 places 721 on roll 2020/21 750 places 739 on roll 2021/22 750 places 740 on roll 2022/23 750 places 751 on roll 2023/24 750 places 747 on roll 2024/25 750 places 753 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 Bernadette Catholic Secondary School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
25 November 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2814

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
Bristol, City of

Postcode BS14 9LS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 109331).

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.