School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 179 and 193 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

193 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman 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

Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman 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 1.22 per place 181 first choices 148 places 2016/17 1.24 per place 186 first choices 150 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 165 first choices 150 places 2018/19 1.04 per place 156 first choices 150 places 2019/20 1.14 per place 181 first choices 159 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 148 first choices 159 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 148 first choices 160 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 161 first choices 175 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 151 first choices 163 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 161 first choices 171 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 162 first choices 177 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 193 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 193 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman 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
2015/16 148 181 140 1.22
2016/17 150 186 145 1.24
2017/18 150 165 133 1.1
2018/19 150 156 130 1.04
2019/20 159 181 144 1.14
2020/21 159 148 136 0.93
2021/22 160 148 146 0.93
2022/23 175 161 160 0.92
2023/24 163 151 151 0.93
2024/25 171 161 161 0.94
2025/26 177 162 162 0.92
2026/27 179 193 174 1.08

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

193

556 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.2%

174 of 193

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 179 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School published for 2027 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 Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School, 2027 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 Catholic children who are looked after; or who were previously looked after, but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangement order, or special guardianship order; or those children who appear to the school to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted
2 Baptised Roman Catholic pupils a. living in contributory parishes and attend an associated Roman Catholic Primary School b. living in contributory parishes c. attending an associated Roman Catholic Primary School d. who have a sibling at the school e. in a Roman Catholic Primary School f. Not in any of the 5 sub-categories above
3 Other children who are looked after; or who were previously looked after, but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangement order, or special guardianship order; or those children who appear to the school to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted
4 The children of staff of Ss John Fisher & Thomas More RCHS – who have been permanently employed at the school for two or more years at the time of application is made and/or the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage
5 Children associated to a Church which is in full membership of Churches Together in England or the Evangelical Alliance a. Who have a parent/guardian who worships in a Church which is in full membership of Churches Together in England or the Evangelical Alliance (see note 1) b. Who have been baptised in a Church which is in full membership of Churches Together in England or the Evangelical Alliance
6 Siblings of children in years 8-11 on the date of admission to Ss John Fisher & Thomas More RCHS (see note 2) 7. Other children in associated Primary Schools
7 Children who have proven exceptional medical or social needs where admission to the school might best help satisfy those exceptional needs (see note 3).
8 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 2027 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.

Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

815

90.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

85

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 Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman 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 Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School reported 85 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.6% 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 Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 740 places 741 on roll 2010/11 750 places 728 on roll 2011/12 750 places 734 on roll 2012/13 750 places 732 on roll 2013/14 750 places 729 on roll 2014/15 750 places 737 on roll 2015/16 750 places 729 on roll 2016/17 750 places 741 on roll 2017/18 750 places 738 on roll 2018/19 750 places 750 on roll 2020/21 750 places 764 on roll 2021/22 800 places 783 on roll 2022/23 800 places 803 on roll 2023/24 800 places 813 on roll 2024/25 900 places 815 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 BB8 8JT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119785).

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.