School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Holy Cross Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named Holy Cross Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 189 and 216 put it first.

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

1.14

first choices for every place available

216 first preferences for 189 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Holy Cross Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Holy Cross 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 Lancashire 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 Lancashire, 28.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 768 of 2,706 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 Lancashire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Lancashire 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

Holy Cross Catholic High 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 Holy Cross 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 1.01 per place 166 first choices 165 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 168 first choices 165 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 171 first choices 191 places 2018/19 1.03 per place 200 first choices 194 places 2019/20 1.08 per place 212 first choices 196 places 2020/21 1.27 per place 242 first choices 191 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 210 first choices 195 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 215 first choices 197 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 244 first choices 195 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 218 first choices 193 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 217 first choices 191 places 2026/27 1.14 per place 216 first choices 189 places
First preferences per place at Holy Cross Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 216 first preferences for 189 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Holy Cross 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
2015/16 165 166 156 1.01
2016/17 165 168 161 1.02
2017/18 191 171 171 0.9
2018/19 194 200 186 1.03
2019/20 196 212 187 1.08
2020/21 191 242 185 1.27
2021/22 195 210 191 1.08
2022/23 197 215 186 1.09
2023/24 195 244 191 1.25
2024/25 193 218 180 1.13
2025/26 191 217 180 1.14
2026/27 189 216 176 1.14

Places offered

189

in 2026/27

Named first choice

216

604 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.5%

176 of 216

Offers to families outside the council

4%

7 of 189 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Holy Cross Catholic High School published for 2025 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Holy Cross Catholic High School, 2025 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after children and previously looked after children.
2 Catholic children who are resident in the current parishes of St Chad, St Gregory, St Mary, St Oswald, Sacred Heart, St Joseph (all of which in Chorley) and St Joseph (Withnell) and St Joseph (Anderton). (see notes 3&10)
3 Other Catholic children. (see note 3)
4 Children attending one of the following Catholic Partner Primary Schools in the parishes or former parishes named in criterion 2 above: Sacred Heart St Joseph’s, Chorley St Chad’s St Joseph’s, Withnell St Gregory’s St Mary’s, Chorley St Joseph’s, Anderton St Oswald’s, Coppull
5 Members of an Eastern Christian Church not in full communion with Rome. (see note 4)
6 Children of other Christian Ecclesial Communities whose membership is evidenced by a minister of religion. (see note 5)
7 Children of other faiths whose membership is evidenced by a religious leader. (see note 6)
8 Any other children.

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2025 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Holy Cross Catholic High School's determined admission arrangements for 2025 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

978

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

976

99.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

2

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Holy Cross 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 Holy Cross Catholic High School reported 2 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.8% 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 Holy Cross Catholic High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 825 places 822 on roll 2010/11 825 places 832 on roll 2011/12 825 places 833 on roll 2012/13 825 places 809 on roll 2013/14 845 places 796 on roll 2014/15 865 places 770 on roll 2015/16 825 places 779 on roll 2016/17 825 places 779 on roll 2017/18 975 places 815 on roll 2018/19 975 places 866 on roll 2020/21 975 places 945 on roll 2021/22 975 places 973 on roll 2022/23 975 places 976 on roll 2023/24 978 places 976 on roll 2024/25 978 places 976 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
Lancashire

Postcode PR7 3LS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119803).

Other contested secondary schools in Lancashire

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.