School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 153 families who named The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 123 and 244 put it first.

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

1.98

first choices for every place available

244 first preferences for 123 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC 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 Kensington and Chelsea 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 Kensington and Chelsea, 12.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 11 of 85 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 Kensington and Chelsea.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kensington and Chelsea 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 Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.9 1.8 2.6 3.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 3.24 per place 369 first choices 114 places 2016/17 3.1 per place 357 first choices 115 places 2017/18 3.18 per place 379 first choices 119 places 2018/19 3.23 per place 381 first choices 118 places 2019/20 2.88 per place 343 first choices 119 places 2020/21 2.89 per place 353 first choices 122 places 2021/22 2.54 per place 310 first choices 122 places 2022/23 2.45 per place 297 first choices 121 places 2023/24 1.93 per place 238 first choices 123 places 2024/25 1.79 per place 218 first choices 122 places 2025/26 2.04 per place 253 first choices 124 places 2026/27 1.98 per place 244 first choices 123 places
First preferences per place at The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 244 first preferences for 123 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 114 369 91 3.24
2016/17 115 357 95 3.1
2017/18 119 379 99 3.18
2018/19 118 381 96 3.23
2019/20 119 343 92 2.88
2020/21 122 353 94 2.89
2021/22 122 310 94 2.54
2022/23 121 297 100 2.45
2023/24 123 238 93 1.93
2024/25 122 218 96 1.79
2025/26 124 253 102 2.04
2026/27 123 244 91 1.98

Places offered

123

in 2026/27

Named first choice

244

662 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

37.3%

91 of 244

Offers to families outside the council

93%

115 of 123 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 100506.

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

612

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

639

104.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

27

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

340

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 Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC 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 Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 922 places 943 on roll 2010/11 922 places 952 on roll 2011/12 905 places 937 on roll 2012/13 905 places 955 on roll 2013/14 905 places 950 on roll 2014/15 905 places 945 on roll 2015/16 905 places 943 on roll 2016/17 981 places 955 on roll 2017/18 981 places 966 on roll 2018/19 981 places 990 on roll 2020/21 952 places 1,006 on roll 2021/22 952 places 1,031 on roll 2022/23 952 places 1,028 on roll 2023/24 952 places 1,025 on roll 2024/25 952 places 1,028 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial RC School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
3 August 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3878

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Kensington and Chelsea

Postcode W14 8BZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141931).

Other contested secondary schools in Kensington and Chelsea

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.