School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Mary's Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 46 families who named St Mary's Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 160 and 199 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

199 first preferences for 160 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Mary's Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Mary'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

St Mary's Catholic High School turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Mary'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 0.76 per place 64 first choices 84 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 96 first choices 112 places 2017/18 0.82 per place 103 first choices 125 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 126 first choices 141 places 2019/20 0.84 per place 119 first choices 142 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 153 first choices 162 places 2021/22 0.84 per place 136 first choices 162 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 173 first choices 164 places 2023/24 1 per place 166 first choices 166 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 164 first choices 166 places 2025/26 1.29 per place 209 first choices 162 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 199 first choices 160 places
First preferences per place at St Mary's Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 160 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Mary'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 84 64 64 0.76
2016/17 112 96 96 0.86
2017/18 125 103 103 0.82
2018/19 141 126 126 0.89
2019/20 142 119 119 0.84
2020/21 162 153 147 0.94
2021/22 162 136 136 0.84
2022/23 164 173 152 1.05
2023/24 166 166 151 1
2024/25 166 164 156 0.99
2025/26 162 209 155 1.29
2026/27 160 199 153 1.24

Places offered

160

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

474 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.9%

153 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 160 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

965

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

811

84% of capacity

Unfilled places

154

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 Mary'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 St Mary's Catholic High School reported 154 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84% 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 Mary'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 2009/10 871 places 791 on roll 2010/11 871 places 774 on roll 2011/12 871 places 746 on roll 2012/13 928 places 725 on roll 2013/14 898 places 691 on roll 2014/15 898 places 603 on roll 2015/16 926 places 551 on roll 2016/17 849 places 559 on roll 2017/18 849 places 602 on roll 2018/19 849 places 637 on roll 2020/21 849 places 756 on roll 2021/22 890 places 774 on roll 2022/23 890 places 794 on roll 2023/24 890 places 811 on roll 2024/25 965 places 811 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 PR25 1BS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119816).

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.