School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cardinal Newman Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named Cardinal Newman Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: 248 put it first and 217 of them were offered one.

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

31

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

248 first preferences for 250 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cardinal Newman Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for Cardinal Newman 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 Coventry 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 Coventry, 21.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 224 of 1,056 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 Coventry.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Coventry 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

Cardinal Newman Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 1 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 Cardinal Newman 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 0.95 per place 200 first choices 210 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 198 first choices 209 places 2017/18 0.82 per place 178 first choices 218 places 2018/19 0.77 per place 173 first choices 224 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 216 first choices 246 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 222 first choices 249 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 212 first choices 249 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 227 first choices 250 places 2023/24 0.96 per place 231 first choices 241 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 248 first choices 246 places 2025/26 1 per place 248 first choices 248 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 248 first choices 250 places
First preferences per place at Cardinal Newman Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 248 first preferences for 250 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cardinal Newman 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
2015/16 210 200 187 0.95
2016/17 209 198 196 0.95
2017/18 218 178 178 0.82
2018/19 224 173 173 0.77
2019/20 246 216 213 0.88
2020/21 249 222 218 0.89
2021/22 249 212 208 0.85
2022/23 250 227 225 0.91
2023/24 241 231 219 0.96
2024/25 246 248 224 1.01
2025/26 248 248 229 1
2026/27 250 248 217 0.99

Places offered

250

in 2026/27

Named first choice

248

568 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.5%

217 of 248

Offers to families outside the council

6%

14 of 250 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 103743.

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

1,250

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,229

98.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

218

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 Cardinal Newman 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 Cardinal Newman Catholic School reported 21 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.3% 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 Cardinal Newman Catholic School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,224 places 1,297 on roll 2010/11 1,224 places 1,260 on roll 2011/12 1,279 places 1,266 on roll 2012/13 1,279 places 1,241 on roll 2013/14 1,279 places 1,227 on roll 2014/15 1,279 places 1,231 on roll 2015/16 1,279 places 1,236 on roll 2016/17 1,279 places 1,231 on roll 2017/18 1,288 places 1,274 on roll 2018/19 1,288 places 1,308 on roll 2020/21 1,288 places 1,364 on roll 2021/22 1,468 places 1,380 on roll 2022/23 1,468 places 1,424 on roll 2023/24 1,468 places 1,482 on roll 2024/25 1,468 places 1,443 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
Coventry

Postcode CV6 2FR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147346).

Other contested secondary schools in Coventry

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.