School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School as their first choice did not get a place: 134 put it first and 116 of them were offered one.

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

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

134 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Brentwood Ursuline Convent High 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 Essex 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 Essex, 15.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 249 of 1,651 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 Essex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Essex 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

Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Brentwood Ursuline Convent High 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 0.97 per place 166 first choices 171 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 148 first choices 171 places 2017/18 0.84 per place 147 first choices 175 places 2018/19 0.72 per place 125 first choices 174 places 2019/20 0.8 per place 140 first choices 175 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 168 first choices 175 places 2021/22 0.69 per place 120 first choices 175 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 160 first choices 175 places 2023/24 0.9 per place 157 first choices 175 places 2024/25 0.79 per place 139 first choices 175 places 2025/26 0.66 per place 116 first choices 175 places 2026/27 0.77 per place 134 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 134 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 171 166 145 0.97
2016/17 171 148 118 0.87
2017/18 175 147 132 0.84
2018/19 174 125 116 0.72
2019/20 175 140 119 0.8
2020/21 175 168 120 0.96
2021/22 175 120 108 0.69
2022/23 175 160 131 0.91
2023/24 175 157 130 0.9
2024/25 175 139 118 0.79
2025/26 175 116 114 0.66
2026/27 175 134 116 0.77

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

134

515 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.6%

116 of 134

Offers to families outside the council

44%

77 of 175 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

847

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

856

101.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

9

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Brentwood Ursuline Convent High 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 Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,047 places 1,031 on roll 2013/14 1,047 places 1,015 on roll 2014/15 1,047 places 1,001 on roll 2015/16 1,047 places 1,010 on roll 2016/17 1,047 places 1,073 on roll 2017/18 1,047 places 1,086 on roll 2018/19 1,047 places 1,071 on roll 2020/21 1,047 places 1,054 on roll 2021/22 1,047 places 1,032 on roll 2022/23 1,047 places 1,007 on roll 2023/24 1,047 places 1,022 on roll 2024/25 1,047 places 1,012 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
Essex

Postcode CM14 4EX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138834).

Other contested secondary schools in Essex

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.