Refused a place at St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School?

Name: Applications and offers at St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School, 2015/16 to 2026/27
Creator: Department for Education
License: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 79 families who named St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 207 and 277 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.

1.34

first choices for every place available

277 first preferences for 207 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Mary Redcliffe and Temple 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 Mary Redcliffe and Temple 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 St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 277 first preferences for 207 places.

View as a table

Places, first preferences and offers at St Mary Redcliffe and Temple 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	205	308	188	1.5
2016/17	210	286	190	1.36
2017/18	214	306	190	1.43
2018/19	213	331	188	1.55
2019/20	212	332	192	1.57
2020/21	210	297	190	1.41
2021/22	207	297	183	1.43
2022/23	207	273	190	1.32
2023/24	210	253	187	1.2
2024/25	212	313	192	1.48
2025/26	207	271	190	1.31
2026/27	207	277	198	1.34

Places offered

207

in 2026/27

Named first choice

277

620 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.5%

198 of 277

Offers to families outside the council

12%

24 of 207 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

1,080

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,093

101.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

450

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 Mary Redcliffe and Temple 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 Mary Redcliffe and Temple 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

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 Mary Redcliffe and Temple School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined	Outcome	Determination
10 August 2020	No fault found	ADA3715 and VAR1063
13 February 2015	Arrangements did not comply	ADA2773

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

How close you had to live. Cut-off distances are set by whoever runs admissions for the school. Bristol, City of does not publish them, and no council is required to — the regulations ask only for the admission number and the preferences received. Ask the admission authority directly — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.

About the school

Type: Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy: Non-selective
Religious character: Faith
Entry point: Year 7
Council: Bristol, City of

Postcode BS1 6RT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 109327).

Other contested secondary schools in Bristol, City of

Bristol Cathedral Choir School 1.52 first choices per place
Redland Green School 1.50 first choices per place
Bristol Free School 1.38 first choices per place
Trinity Academy 1.25 first choices per place
St Bede's Catholic College 1.23 first choices per place
St Bernadette Catholic Secondary School 1.21 first choices per place
Ashton Park School 1.19 first choices per place
Bristol Metropolitan Academy 1.13 first choices per place

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.