School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 54 families who named The Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 313 and 324 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

324 first preferences for 313 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Cardinal Wiseman 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 Ealing 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 Ealing, 18.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 110 of 587 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 Ealing.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Ealing 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

The Cardinal Wiseman 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 11 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 The Cardinal Wiseman 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 1.17 per place 345 first choices 295 places 2016/17 1.12 per place 337 first choices 300 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 346 first choices 291 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 354 first choices 283 places 2019/20 1.48 per place 451 first choices 305 places 2020/21 1.38 per place 405 first choices 293 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 379 first choices 310 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 372 first choices 289 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 372 first choices 312 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 312 first choices 309 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 313 first choices 322 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 324 first choices 313 places
First preferences per place at The Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 324 first preferences for 313 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Cardinal Wiseman 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
2015/16 295 345 257 1.17
2016/17 300 337 244 1.12
2017/18 291 346 254 1.19
2018/19 283 354 241 1.25
2019/20 305 451 286 1.48
2020/21 293 405 264 1.38
2021/22 310 379 268 1.22
2022/23 289 372 270 1.29
2023/24 312 372 275 1.19
2024/25 309 312 259 1.01
2025/26 322 313 264 0.97
2026/27 313 324 270 1.04

Places offered

313

in 2026/27

Named first choice

324

941 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.3%

270 of 324

Offers to families outside the council

15%

46 of 308 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

1,550

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,544

99.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

770

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 The Cardinal Wiseman 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 The Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.6% 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 The Cardinal Wiseman 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 1,777 places 1,853 on roll 2010/11 1,778 places 1,822 on roll 2011/12 1,778 places 1,793 on roll 2012/13 1,845 places 1,859 on roll 2013/14 1,939 places 1,859 on roll 2014/15 1,973 places 1,881 on roll 2015/16 2,084 places 1,850 on roll 2016/17 2,084 places 1,846 on roll 2017/18 2,084 places 1,845 on roll 2018/19 2,096 places 1,902 on roll 2020/21 2,132 places 1,958 on roll 2021/22 2,373 places 1,960 on roll 2022/23 2,320 places 1,978 on roll 2023/24 2,320 places 1,982 on roll 2024/25 2,320 places 1,994 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. The Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 December 2011 No fault found VAR560

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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Ealing

Postcode UB6 9AW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 101934).

Other contested secondary schools in Ealing

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.