School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Thomas More Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 37 families who named St Thomas More Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 124 and 159 put it first.

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

1.28

first choices for every place available

159 first preferences for 124 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Thomas More Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Thomas More Catholic High 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 Cheshire East 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 Cheshire East, 31.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 57 of 181 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 Cheshire East.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cheshire East 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 Thomas More Catholic High School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at St Thomas More Catholic High 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 1.17 per place 145 first choices 124 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 162 first choices 136 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 118 first choices 126 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 159 first choices 127 places 2019/20 1.45 per place 186 first choices 128 places 2020/21 1.49 per place 191 first choices 128 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 164 first choices 128 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 138 first choices 128 places 2023/24 1.42 per place 182 first choices 128 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 165 first choices 128 places 2025/26 1.33 per place 170 first choices 128 places 2026/27 1.28 per place 159 first choices 124 places
First preferences per place at St Thomas More Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 159 first preferences for 124 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Thomas More Catholic High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 124 145 123 1.17
2016/17 136 162 133 1.19
2017/18 126 118 118 0.94
2018/19 127 159 124 1.25
2019/20 128 186 125 1.45
2020/21 128 191 128 1.49
2021/22 128 164 121 1.28
2022/23 128 138 120 1.08
2023/24 128 182 123 1.42
2024/25 128 165 128 1.29
2025/26 128 170 128 1.33
2026/27 124 159 122 1.28

Places offered

124

in 2026/27

Named first choice

159

347 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.7%

122 of 159

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 124 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

642

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

645

100.5% 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 Thomas More Catholic High 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 Thomas More Catholic High 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Thomas More Catholic High School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 642 places 647 on roll 2014/15 642 places 649 on roll 2015/16 642 places 645 on roll 2016/17 642 places 652 on roll 2017/18 642 places 664 on roll 2018/19 642 places 648 on roll 2020/21 642 places 647 on roll 2021/22 642 places 651 on roll 2022/23 642 places 656 on roll 2023/24 642 places 667 on roll 2024/25 642 places 645 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.

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
Cheshire East

Postcode CW2 8AE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139764).

Other contested secondary schools in Cheshire East

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.