School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St John's Catholic School & Sixth Form College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named St John's Catholic School & Sixth Form College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 209 and 210 put it first.

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

1

first choices for every place available

210 first preferences for 209 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St John's Catholic School & Sixth Form College

There is no published appeal success rate for St John's Catholic School & Sixth Form 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 County Durham 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 County Durham, 35.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 153 of 426 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 County Durham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not County Durham 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 John's Catholic School & Sixth Form College turned first-choice families away in 8 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 John's Catholic School & Sixth Form 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 1.03 per place 241 first choices 233 places 2016/17 1 per place 266 first choices 266 places 2017/18 1 per place 229 first choices 228 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 244 first choices 228 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 229 first choices 227 places 2020/21 1 per place 215 first choices 214 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 238 first choices 226 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 218 first choices 224 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 232 first choices 222 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 189 first choices 191 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 193 first choices 202 places 2026/27 1 per place 210 first choices 209 places
First preferences per place at St John's Catholic School & Sixth Form College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 210 first preferences for 209 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St John's Catholic School & Sixth Form College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 233 241 231 1.03
2016/17 266 266 262 1
2017/18 228 229 226 1
2018/19 228 244 225 1.07
2019/20 227 229 219 1.01
2020/21 214 215 205 1
2021/22 226 238 220 1.05
2022/23 224 218 209 0.97
2023/24 222 232 218 1.05
2024/25 191 189 189 0.99
2025/26 202 193 193 0.96
2026/27 209 210 203 1

Places offered

209

in 2026/27

Named first choice

210

416 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.7%

203 of 210

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 209 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

1,125

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,070

95.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

55

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

405

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 John's Catholic School & Sixth Form 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 John's Catholic School & Sixth Form College reported 55 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.1% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St John's Catholic School & Sixth Form College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,530 places 1,368 on roll 2012/13 1,530 places 1,361 on roll 2013/14 1,306 places 1,361 on roll 2014/15 1,306 places 1,310 on roll 2015/16 1,306 places 1,354 on roll 2016/17 1,509 places 1,353 on roll 2017/18 1,530 places 1,364 on roll 2018/19 1,530 places 1,377 on roll 2020/21 1,530 places 1,344 on roll 2021/22 1,530 places 1,342 on roll 2022/23 1,530 places 1,322 on roll 2023/24 1,530 places 1,302 on roll 2024/25 1,530 places 1,253 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
County Durham

Postcode DL14 6JT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137702).

Other contested secondary schools in County Durham

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.