School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 111 families who named Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 257 and 363 put it first.

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

1.41

first choices for every place available

363 first preferences for 257 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead

There is no published appeal success rate for Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Gateshead 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 Gateshead, 19.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 43 of 222 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 Gateshead.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Gateshead 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

Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead, 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 1.44 per place 329 first choices 229 places 2016/17 1.85 per place 433 first choices 234 places 2017/18 1.54 per place 365 first choices 237 places 2018/19 1.53 per place 378 first choices 247 places 2019/20 1.66 per place 418 first choices 252 places 2020/21 1.63 per place 409 first choices 251 places 2021/22 1.59 per place 405 first choices 255 places 2022/23 1.63 per place 379 first choices 232 places 2023/24 1.51 per place 377 first choices 249 places 2024/25 1.3 per place 323 first choices 249 places 2025/26 1.43 per place 361 first choices 253 places 2026/27 1.41 per place 363 first choices 257 places
First preferences per place at Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 363 first preferences for 257 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 229 329 228 1.44
2016/17 234 433 234 1.85
2017/18 237 365 237 1.54
2018/19 247 378 245 1.53
2019/20 252 418 251 1.66
2020/21 251 409 248 1.63
2021/22 255 405 254 1.59
2022/23 232 379 228 1.63
2023/24 249 377 241 1.51
2024/25 249 323 235 1.3
2025/26 253 361 247 1.43
2026/27 257 363 252 1.41

Places offered

257

in 2026/27

Named first choice

363

827 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.4%

252 of 363

Offers to families outside the council

10%

25 of 257 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

1,125

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,250

111.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

125

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

340

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 Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead 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 Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Cardinal Hume Catholic School, Gateshead from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,200 places 1,132 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 1,234 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,304 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,279 on roll 2015/16 1,495 places 1,314 on roll 2016/17 1,495 places 1,342 on roll 2017/18 1,495 places 1,367 on roll 2018/19 1,465 places 1,437 on roll 2020/21 1,465 places 1,524 on roll 2021/22 1,465 places 1,499 on roll 2022/23 1,465 places 1,503 on roll 2023/24 1,465 places 1,513 on roll 2024/25 1,465 places 1,480 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
Gateshead

Postcode NE9 6RZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137852).

Other contested secondary schools in Gateshead

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.