School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Mark's West Essex Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named St Mark's West Essex Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 180 and 197 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

197 first preferences for 180 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Mark's West Essex Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Mark's West Essex 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 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

St Mark's West Essex Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Mark's West Essex 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 0.69 per place 118 first choices 172 places 2016/17 0.63 per place 105 first choices 166 places 2017/18 0.73 per place 122 first choices 166 places 2018/19 0.81 per place 138 first choices 171 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 191 first choices 170 places 2020/21 1.06 per place 178 first choices 168 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 148 first choices 171 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 148 first choices 170 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 169 first choices 171 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 188 first choices 180 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 200 first choices 179 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 197 first choices 180 places
First preferences per place at St Mark's West Essex Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 197 first preferences for 180 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Mark's West Essex 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
2015/16 172 118 117 0.69
2016/17 166 105 105 0.63
2017/18 166 122 122 0.73
2018/19 171 138 138 0.81
2019/20 170 191 147 1.12
2020/21 168 178 156 1.06
2021/22 171 148 144 0.87
2022/23 170 148 148 0.87
2023/24 171 169 165 0.99
2024/25 180 188 166 1.04
2025/26 179 200 172 1.12
2026/27 180 197 173 1.09

Places offered

180

in 2026/27

Named first choice

197

473 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.8%

173 of 197

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 180 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

882

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

203

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 Mark's West Essex 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 St Mark's West Essex Catholic School reported 18 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Mark's West Essex Catholic School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,120 places 1,020 on roll 2012/13 1,120 places 969 on roll 2013/14 1,120 places 970 on roll 2014/15 1,120 places 980 on roll 2015/16 1,120 places 991 on roll 2016/17 1,120 places 968 on roll 2017/18 1,120 places 962 on roll 2018/19 1,120 places 985 on roll 2020/21 1,120 places 1,040 on roll 2021/22 1,120 places 1,071 on roll 2022/23 1,120 places 1,049 on roll 2023/24 1,120 places 1,062 on roll 2024/25 1,103 places 1,080 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 CM18 6AA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137058).

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.