School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at All Saints Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 73 families who named All Saints Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 201 and 269 put it first.

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

1.34

first choices for every place available

269 first preferences for 201 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at All Saints Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for All Saints Catholic High 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 Knowsley 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 Knowsley, 20.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 54 of 260 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 Knowsley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Knowsley 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

All Saints Catholic High School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 All Saints Catholic High 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 0.99 per place 164 first choices 166 places 2016/17 0.81 per place 141 first choices 175 places 2017/18 0.77 per place 110 first choices 142 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 175 first choices 181 places 2019/20 1.14 per place 235 first choices 207 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 219 first choices 196 places 2021/22 1.35 per place 259 first choices 192 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 247 first choices 205 places 2023/24 1.51 per place 305 first choices 202 places 2024/25 1.37 per place 287 first choices 209 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 250 first choices 208 places 2026/27 1.34 per place 269 first choices 201 places
First preferences per place at All Saints Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 269 first preferences for 201 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at All Saints Catholic High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 166 164 164 0.99
2016/17 175 141 141 0.81
2017/18 142 110 110 0.77
2018/19 181 175 173 0.97
2019/20 207 235 201 1.14
2020/21 196 219 192 1.12
2021/22 192 259 182 1.35
2022/23 205 247 204 1.2
2023/24 202 305 196 1.51
2024/25 209 287 202 1.37
2025/26 208 250 206 1.2
2026/27 201 269 196 1.34

Places offered

201

in 2026/27

Named first choice

269

457 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.9%

196 of 269

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 201 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

940

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,037

110.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

97

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

110

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 All Saints Catholic High 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 All Saints Catholic High 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 All Saints Catholic High School 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 1,133 places 1,146 on roll 2010/11 1,149 places 1,164 on roll 2011/12 1,149 places 1,114 on roll 2012/13 1,149 places 1,089 on roll 2013/14 1,121 places 1,076 on roll 2014/15 1,121 places 1,022 on roll 2015/16 1,084 places 911 on roll 2016/17 1,096 places 841 on roll 2017/18 1,096 places 848 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 883 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 994 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,056 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,118 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,106 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,108 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
Knowsley

Postcode L33 8XF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135479).

Other contested secondary schools in Knowsley

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.