School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Michael's Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 33 families who named St Michael's Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: 106 put it first and 73 of them were offered one.

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

33

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

106 first preferences for 115 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Michael's Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Michael's 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 Buckinghamshire 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 Buckinghamshire, 12% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 182 of 1,519 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 Buckinghamshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Buckinghamshire 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 Michael's Catholic School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 8 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 Michael's 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 0.79 per place 86 first choices 109 places 2016/17 0.74 per place 88 first choices 119 places 2017/18 0.87 per place 93 first choices 107 places 2018/19 0.78 per place 182 first choices 233 places 2019/20 1.15 per place 291 first choices 252 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 322 first choices 282 places 2021/22 0.78 per place 243 first choices 312 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 333 first choices 272 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 290 first choices 285 places 2024/25 0.83 per place 240 first choices 288 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 233 first choices 269 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 106 first choices 115 places
First preferences per place at St Michael's Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 106 first preferences for 115 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Michael's 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
2015/16 109 86 56 0.79
2016/17 119 88 75 0.74
2017/18 107 93 71 0.87
2018/19 233 182 154 0.78
2019/20 252 291 172 1.15
2020/21 282 322 197 1.14
2021/22 312 243 174 0.78
2022/23 272 333 201 1.22
2023/24 285 290 203 1.02
2024/25 288 240 173 0.83
2025/26 269 233 189 0.87
2026/27 115 106 73 0.92

Places offered

115

in 2026/27

Named first choice

106

463 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

68.9%

73 of 106

Offers to families outside the council

3%

4 of 115 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 110516.

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

1,170

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,168

99.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

2

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

112

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 Michael's 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 St Michael's Catholic School reported 2 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.8% 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 St Michael's Catholic School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,200 2,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 657 places 653 on roll 2010/11 667 places 665 on roll 2011/12 1,090 places 1,077 on roll 2012/13 1,084 places 1,065 on roll 2013/14 1,084 places 1,070 on roll 2014/15 1,090 places 1,075 on roll 2015/16 1,121 places 1,097 on roll 2016/17 1,150 places 1,139 on roll 2017/18 1,264 places 1,169 on roll 2018/19 1,380 places 1,314 on roll 2020/21 2,360 places 1,672 on roll 2021/22 1,280 places 1,236 on roll 2022/23 1,280 places 1,233 on roll 2023/24 1,280 places 1,284 on roll 2024/25 1,282 places 1,314 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 Michael's Catholic School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Michael's Catholic School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
7 January 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2816

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
Buckinghamshire

Postcode HP11 1PW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149612).

Other contested secondary schools in Buckinghamshire

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.