School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 32 families who named St Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 244 and 263 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

263 first preferences for 244 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon

There is no published appeal success rate for St Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon, 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

St Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon, 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 1.22 per place 248 first choices 203 places 2016/17 1.19 per place 258 first choices 216 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 275 first choices 219 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 253 first choices 209 places 2019/20 1.22 per place 296 first choices 242 places 2020/21 1.06 per place 263 first choices 248 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 300 first choices 245 places 2022/23 1 per place 246 first choices 245 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 230 first choices 238 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 236 first choices 244 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 239 first choices 244 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 263 first choices 244 places
First preferences per place at St Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 263 first preferences for 244 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 203 248 200 1.22
2016/17 216 258 211 1.19
2017/18 219 275 213 1.26
2018/19 209 253 200 1.21
2019/20 242 296 241 1.22
2020/21 248 263 240 1.06
2021/22 245 300 239 1.22
2022/23 245 246 236 1
2023/24 238 230 226 0.97
2024/25 244 236 228 0.97
2025/26 244 239 223 0.98
2026/27 244 263 231 1.08

Places offered

244

in 2026/27

Named first choice

263

604 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.8%

231 of 263

Offers to families outside the council

15%

36 of 244 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

1,150

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,182

102.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

32

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

331

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 Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon 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 Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon 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 St Thomas More Catholic School, Blaydon 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 1,481 places 1,512 on roll 2012/13 1,481 places 1,520 on roll 2013/14 1,481 places 1,505 on roll 2014/15 1,481 places 1,546 on roll 2015/16 1,481 places 1,493 on roll 2016/17 1,481 places 1,478 on roll 2017/18 1,481 places 1,490 on roll 2018/19 1,481 places 1,504 on roll 2020/21 1,481 places 1,499 on roll 2021/22 1,481 places 1,474 on roll 2022/23 1,481 places 1,459 on roll 2023/24 1,481 places 1,435 on roll 2024/25 1,481 places 1,396 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 NE21 4BQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137851).

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.