School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 5 families who named The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School as their first choice did not get a place: 189 put it first and 184 of them were offered one.

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

5

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

189 first preferences for 215 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat 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 Herefordshire, County of 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 Herefordshire, County of, 19.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 27 of 137 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 Herefordshire, County of.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Herefordshire, County of 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

The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School turned first-choice families away in 1 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 The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat 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 0.92 per place 199 first choices 216 places 2016/17 0.78 per place 156 first choices 199 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 191 first choices 206 places 2018/19 0.74 per place 158 first choices 214 places 2019/20 0.77 per place 147 first choices 190 places 2020/21 0.74 per place 150 first choices 202 places 2021/22 0.75 per place 146 first choices 194 places 2022/23 0.66 per place 144 first choices 219 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 163 first choices 219 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 203 first choices 212 places 2025/26 0.81 per place 174 first choices 215 places 2026/27 0.88 per place 189 first choices 215 places
First preferences per place at The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 189 first preferences for 215 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 216 199 199 0.92
2016/17 199 156 156 0.78
2017/18 206 191 191 0.93
2018/19 214 158 158 0.74
2019/20 190 147 147 0.77
2020/21 202 150 150 0.74
2021/22 194 146 146 0.75
2022/23 219 144 144 0.66
2023/24 219 163 163 0.74
2024/25 212 203 181 0.96
2025/26 215 174 172 0.81
2026/27 215 189 184 0.88

Places offered

215

in 2026/27

Named first choice

189

386 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.4%

184 of 189

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 215 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

1,220

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,100

90.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

120

across Years 7 to 11

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 The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat 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 The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School reported 120 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.2% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,175 places 1,178 on roll 2010/11 1,175 places 1,177 on roll 2011/12 1,175 places 1,163 on roll 2012/13 1,175 places 1,165 on roll 2013/14 1,175 places 1,139 on roll 2014/15 1,175 places 1,101 on roll 2015/16 1,175 places 1,105 on roll 2016/17 1,175 places 1,097 on roll 2017/18 1,175 places 1,062 on roll 2018/19 1,175 places 1,049 on roll 2020/21 1,175 places 995 on roll 2021/22 1,175 places 988 on roll 2022/23 1,175 places 1,050 on roll 2023/24 1,175 places 1,076 on roll 2024/25 1,220 places 1,100 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Herefordshire, County of

Postcode HR1 1UU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116991).

Other contested secondary schools in Herefordshire, County of

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.