School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Cecilia's RC High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named St Cecilia's RC High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 119 and 127 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

127 first preferences for 119 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Cecilia's RC High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Cecilia's RC 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

St Cecilia's RC High School turned first-choice families away in 7 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 St Cecilia's RC 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 0.85 per place 35 first choices 41 places 2016/17 0.85 per place 52 first choices 61 places 2017/18 0.88 per place 81 first choices 92 places 2018/19 0.86 per place 84 first choices 98 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 106 first choices 110 places 2020/21 1.42 per place 132 first choices 93 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 113 first choices 99 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 110 first choices 96 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 133 first choices 120 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 126 first choices 119 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 135 first choices 120 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 127 first choices 119 places
First preferences per place at St Cecilia's RC High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 127 first preferences for 119 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Cecilia's RC 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 41 35 35 0.85
2016/17 61 52 52 0.85
2017/18 92 81 81 0.88
2018/19 98 84 84 0.86
2019/20 110 106 98 0.96
2020/21 93 132 90 1.42
2021/22 99 113 93 1.14
2022/23 96 110 89 1.15
2023/24 120 133 116 1.11
2024/25 119 126 101 1.06
2025/26 120 135 104 1.12
2026/27 119 127 113 1.07

Places offered

119

in 2026/27

Named first choice

127

317 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89%

113 of 127

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 119 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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

568

94.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

32

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 St Cecilia's RC 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 St Cecilia's RC High School reported 32 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.7% 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 St Cecilia's RC High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 469 places 462 on roll 2010/11 469 places 457 on roll 2011/12 499 places 459 on roll 2012/13 499 places 436 on roll 2013/14 499 places 394 on roll 2014/15 499 places 366 on roll 2015/16 499 places 324 on roll 2016/17 499 places 315 on roll 2017/18 499 places 335 on roll 2018/19 499 places 368 on roll 2020/21 480 places 465 on roll 2021/22 480 places 505 on roll 2022/23 485 places 532 on roll 2023/24 488 places 556 on roll 2024/25 600 places 568 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 PR3 2XA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119800).

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.