School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Catherine's College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 90 families who named St Catherine's College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 211 and 296 put it first.

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

1.40

first choices for every place available

296 first preferences for 211 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Catherine's College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Catherine's 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 East Sussex 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 East Sussex, 24.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 153 of 632 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 East Sussex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not East Sussex 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 Catherine's College 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 Catherine's 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 0.93 per place 186 first choices 200 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 214 first choices 212 places 2017/18 1.23 per place 273 first choices 222 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 242 first choices 222 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 229 first choices 223 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 267 first choices 222 places 2021/22 1.3 per place 287 first choices 220 places 2022/23 1.39 per place 296 first choices 213 places 2023/24 1.42 per place 303 first choices 214 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 266 first choices 214 places 2025/26 1.39 per place 290 first choices 208 places 2026/27 1.4 per place 296 first choices 211 places
First preferences per place at St Catherine's College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 296 first preferences for 211 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Catherine's College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 200 186 186 0.93
2016/17 212 214 194 1.01
2017/18 222 273 201 1.23
2018/19 222 242 215 1.09
2019/20 223 229 210 1.03
2020/21 222 267 209 1.2
2021/22 220 287 217 1.3
2022/23 213 296 209 1.39
2023/24 214 303 210 1.42
2024/25 214 266 205 1.24
2025/26 208 290 206 1.39
2026/27 211 296 206 1.4

Places offered

211

in 2026/27

Named first choice

296

490 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.6%

206 of 296

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 211 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 114613.

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

1,040

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,065

102.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

25

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 Catherine's 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 Catherine's College 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Catherine's College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,040 places 1,046 on roll 2010/11 1,040 places 1,038 on roll 2011/12 1,040 places 1,038 on roll 2012/13 1,040 places 1,045 on roll 2013/14 1,040 places 1,025 on roll 2014/15 1,040 places 1,020 on roll 2015/16 1,040 places 1,033 on roll 2016/17 1,040 places 1,037 on roll 2017/18 1,040 places 1,042 on roll 2018/19 1,080 places 1,054 on roll 2020/21 1,040 places 1,085 on roll 2021/22 1,040 places 1,079 on roll 2022/23 1,040 places 1,077 on roll 2023/24 1,040 places 1,078 on roll 2024/25 1,040 places 1,065 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
East Sussex

Postcode BN23 7BL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143035).

Other contested secondary schools in East Sussex

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.