School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Saint John Henry Newman Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 74 families who named The Saint John Henry Newman Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 219 and 290 put it first.

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

1.32

first choices for every place available

290 first preferences for 219 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Saint John Henry Newman Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Saint John Henry Newman 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 Hertfordshire 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 Hertfordshire, 21% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 314 of 1,496 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 Hertfordshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hertfordshire 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 Saint John Henry Newman Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 The Saint John Henry Newman 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 1.26 per place 280 first choices 222 places 2016/17 1.15 per place 246 first choices 214 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 242 first choices 223 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 281 first choices 225 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 248 first choices 221 places 2020/21 1.15 per place 263 first choices 228 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 224 first choices 220 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 212 first choices 218 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 247 first choices 219 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 261 first choices 216 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 245 first choices 208 places 2026/27 1.32 per place 290 first choices 219 places
First preferences per place at The Saint John Henry Newman Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 290 first preferences for 219 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Saint John Henry Newman 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
2015/16 222 280 215 1.26
2016/17 214 246 207 1.15
2017/18 223 242 217 1.09
2018/19 225 281 225 1.25
2019/20 221 248 214 1.12
2020/21 228 263 224 1.15
2021/22 220 224 208 1.02
2022/23 218 212 205 0.97
2023/24 219 247 213 1.13
2024/25 216 261 213 1.21
2025/26 208 245 199 1.18
2026/27 219 290 216 1.32

Places offered

219

in 2026/27

Named first choice

290

577 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.5%

216 of 290

Offers to families outside the council

8%

18 of 219 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

1,020

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,206

118.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

186

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

450

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 Saint John Henry Newman 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 The Saint John Henry Newman Catholic 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Saint John Henry Newman Catholic School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,489 places 1,563 on roll 2012/13 1,470 places 1,590 on roll 2013/14 1,470 places 1,559 on roll 2014/15 1,470 places 1,565 on roll 2015/16 1,470 places 1,543 on roll 2016/17 1,470 places 1,503 on roll 2017/18 1,470 places 1,512 on roll 2018/19 1,470 places 1,538 on roll 2020/21 1,650 places 1,599 on roll 2021/22 1,650 places 1,628 on roll 2022/23 1,650 places 1,610 on roll 2023/24 1,650 places 1,601 on roll 2024/25 1,470 places 1,605 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
Hertfordshire

Postcode SG1 4AE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137895).

Other contested secondary schools in Hertfordshire

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.