School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Coloma Convent Girls' School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 13 families who named Coloma Convent Girls' School as their first choice did not get a place: 125 put it first and 112 of them were offered one.

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

13

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

125 first preferences for 160 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Coloma Convent Girls' School

There is no published appeal success rate for Coloma Convent Girls' 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 Croydon 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 Croydon, 8.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 13 of 160 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 Croydon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Croydon 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

Coloma Convent Girls' School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 2 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 Coloma Convent Girls' School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.87 per place 280 first choices 150 places 2016/17 2.13 per place 313 first choices 147 places 2017/18 1.52 per place 274 first choices 180 places 2018/19 1.87 per place 308 first choices 165 places 2019/20 1.75 per place 272 first choices 155 places 2020/21 1.61 per place 249 first choices 155 places 2021/22 1.45 per place 224 first choices 155 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 170 first choices 175 places 2023/24 0.77 per place 120 first choices 155 places 2024/25 0.69 per place 95 first choices 138 places 2025/26 0.64 per place 106 first choices 165 places 2026/27 0.78 per place 125 first choices 160 places
First preferences per place at Coloma Convent Girls' School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 125 first preferences for 160 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Coloma Convent Girls' School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 150 280 131 1.87
2016/17 147 313 141 2.13
2017/18 180 274 158 1.52
2018/19 165 308 153 1.87
2019/20 155 272 137 1.75
2020/21 155 249 140 1.61
2021/22 155 224 132 1.45
2022/23 175 170 133 0.97
2023/24 155 120 113 0.77
2024/25 138 95 95 0.69
2025/26 165 106 106 0.64
2026/27 160 125 112 0.78

Places offered

160

in 2026/27

Named first choice

125

416 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.6%

112 of 125

Offers to families outside the council

4%

7 of 160 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 101823.

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

882

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

753

85.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

129

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

294

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 Coloma Convent Girls' 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 Coloma Convent Girls' School reported 129 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85.4% 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 Coloma Convent Girls' School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,057 places 1,047 on roll 2010/11 1,044 places 1,054 on roll 2011/12 1,044 places 1,078 on roll 2012/13 1,044 places 1,069 on roll 2013/14 1,044 places 1,070 on roll 2014/15 1,092 places 1,062 on roll 2015/16 1,092 places 1,050 on roll 2016/17 1,044 places 1,044 on roll 2017/18 1,044 places 1,048 on roll 2018/19 1,044 places 1,056 on roll 2020/21 1,044 places 1,080 on roll 2021/22 1,044 places 1,050 on roll 2022/23 1,044 places 1,075 on roll 2023/24 1,044 places 1,024 on roll 2024/25 1,176 places 930 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. Coloma Convent Girls' School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Coloma Convent Girls' School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 October 2011 Arrangements did not comply ADA2146 and 2148

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
Croydon

Postcode CR9 5AS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149347).

Other contested secondary schools in Croydon

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.