School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Douay Martyrs Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 28 families who named The Douay Martyrs Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: 169 put it first and 141 of them were offered one.

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

28

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

169 first preferences for 235 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Douay Martyrs Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Douay Martyrs 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 Hillingdon 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 Hillingdon, 8.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 28 of 326 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 Hillingdon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hillingdon 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 Douay Martyrs Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Douay Martyrs 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 0.44 per place 94 first choices 213 places 2016/17 0.51 per place 120 first choices 237 places 2017/18 0.53 per place 127 first choices 238 places 2018/19 0.54 per place 121 first choices 226 places 2019/20 0.5 per place 134 first choices 266 places 2020/21 0.58 per place 150 first choices 257 places 2021/22 0.53 per place 142 first choices 268 places 2022/23 0.66 per place 165 first choices 251 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 174 first choices 236 places 2024/25 0.69 per place 165 first choices 238 places 2025/26 0.62 per place 145 first choices 235 places 2026/27 0.72 per place 169 first choices 235 places
First preferences per place at The Douay Martyrs Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 169 first preferences for 235 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Douay Martyrs 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
2015/16 213 94 94 0.44
2016/17 237 120 120 0.51
2017/18 238 127 113 0.53
2018/19 226 121 106 0.54
2019/20 266 134 116 0.5
2020/21 257 150 128 0.58
2021/22 268 142 131 0.53
2022/23 251 165 154 0.66
2023/24 236 174 151 0.74
2024/25 238 165 148 0.69
2025/26 235 145 128 0.62
2026/27 235 169 141 0.72

Places offered

235

in 2026/27

Named first choice

169

726 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.4%

141 of 169

Offers to families outside the council

5%

11 of 235 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

1,363

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,193

87.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

170

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

96

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 Douay Martyrs 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 Douay Martyrs Catholic School reported 170 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.5% 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 The Douay Martyrs Catholic School 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 1,297 places 1,375 on roll 2012/13 1,297 places 1,381 on roll 2013/14 1,297 places 1,314 on roll 2014/15 1,297 places 1,297 on roll 2015/16 1,297 places 1,277 on roll 2016/17 1,297 places 1,270 on roll 2017/18 1,297 places 1,320 on roll 2018/19 1,297 places 1,334 on roll 2020/21 1,297 places 1,436 on roll 2021/22 1,297 places 1,513 on roll 2022/23 1,297 places 1,554 on roll 2023/24 1,297 places 1,497 on roll 2024/25 1,459 places 1,428 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
Hillingdon

Postcode UB10 8QY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137925).

Other contested secondary schools in Hillingdon

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.