School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Our Lady's Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Our Lady's Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: 163 put it first and 148 of them were offered one.

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

15

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

163 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Our Lady's Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Our Lady's 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

Our Lady's Catholic High School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Our Lady's 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 1.12 per place 199 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 199 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 212 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.2 per place 214 first choices 179 places 2019/20 1.3 per place 233 first choices 179 places 2020/21 1.41 per place 248 first choices 176 places 2021/22 1.35 per place 242 first choices 179 places 2022/23 1.39 per place 248 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 213 first choices 179 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 182 first choices 177 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 166 first choices 180 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 163 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Our Lady's Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 163 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Our Lady's 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
2015/16 178 199 168 1.12
2016/17 180 199 169 1.11
2017/18 179 212 163 1.18
2018/19 179 214 168 1.2
2019/20 179 233 168 1.3
2020/21 176 248 169 1.41
2021/22 179 242 162 1.35
2022/23 179 248 174 1.39
2023/24 179 213 166 1.19
2024/25 177 182 159 1.03
2025/26 180 166 151 0.92
2026/27 175 163 148 0.93

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

163

623 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.8%

148 of 163

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 175 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

932

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

896

96.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

36

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 Our Lady's 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 Our Lady's Catholic High School reported 36 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.1% 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 Our Lady's 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 2009/10 900 places 876 on roll 2010/11 906 places 870 on roll 2011/12 906 places 885 on roll 2012/13 906 places 889 on roll 2013/14 900 places 894 on roll 2014/15 900 places 894 on roll 2015/16 900 places 885 on roll 2016/17 900 places 876 on roll 2017/18 900 places 889 on roll 2018/19 900 places 896 on roll 2020/21 900 places 904 on roll 2021/22 900 places 897 on roll 2022/23 900 places 899 on roll 2023/24 932 places 899 on roll 2024/25 932 places 896 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 PR2 3SQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119779).

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.