School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Aloysius' College?

In 2026/27, St Aloysius' College offered 86 places and 54 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.63

first choices for every place available

54 first preferences for 86 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Aloysius' College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Aloysius' College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Islington 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 Islington, 13% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 23 of 177 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 Islington.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Islington 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 Aloysius' College turned first-choice families away in 3 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 St Aloysius' College, 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 0.73 per place 114 first choices 156 places 2016/17 0.79 per place 141 first choices 178 places 2017/18 0.81 per place 144 first choices 178 places 2018/19 0.61 per place 107 first choices 176 places 2019/20 0.58 per place 82 first choices 142 places 2020/21 0.59 per place 45 first choices 76 places 2021/22 0.4 per place 40 first choices 99 places 2022/23 0.31 per place 32 first choices 102 places 2023/24 0.67 per place 32 first choices 48 places 2024/25 0.87 per place 53 first choices 61 places 2025/26 0.61 per place 31 first choices 51 places 2026/27 0.63 per place 54 first choices 86 places
First preferences per place at St Aloysius' College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 54 first preferences for 86 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Aloysius' College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 156 114 105 0.73
2016/17 178 141 124 0.79
2017/18 178 144 127 0.81
2018/19 176 107 105 0.61
2019/20 142 82 82 0.58
2020/21 76 45 45 0.59
2021/22 99 40 40 0.4
2022/23 102 32 32 0.31
2023/24 48 32 32 0.67
2024/25 61 53 40 0.87
2025/26 51 31 31 0.61
2026/27 86 54 54 0.63

Places offered

86

in 2026/27

Named first choice

54

267 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

54 of 54

Offers to families outside the council

16%

14 of 86 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 100459.

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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

290

32.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

610

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Aloysius' College 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 Aloysius' College reported 610 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 32.2% 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 St Aloysius' College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 954 places 866 on roll 2010/11 954 places 941 on roll 2011/12 954 places 1,060 on roll 2012/13 954 places 997 on roll 2013/14 954 places 1,040 on roll 2014/15 1,073 places 1,031 on roll 2015/16 1,117 places 1,082 on roll 2016/17 1,090 places 1,094 on roll 2017/18 1,150 places 1,094 on roll 2018/19 1,150 places 952 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 706 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 631 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 517 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 393 on roll 2024/25 1,150 places 361 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
Islington

Postcode N6 5LY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 151990).

Other contested secondary schools in Islington

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.