School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bonus Pastor Catholic College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 154 families who named Bonus Pastor Catholic College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 172 and 305 put it first.

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

1.77

first choices for every place available

305 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bonus Pastor Catholic College

There is no published appeal success rate for Bonus Pastor Catholic College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Lewisham 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 Lewisham, 11.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 15 of 133 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 Lewisham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Lewisham 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

Bonus Pastor Catholic College turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Bonus Pastor Catholic College, 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 1.06 per place 159 first choices 150 places 2016/17 1.47 per place 216 first choices 147 places 2017/18 1.29 per place 224 first choices 174 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 213 first choices 172 places 2019/20 1.67 per place 288 first choices 172 places 2020/21 1.42 per place 244 first choices 172 places 2021/22 1.31 per place 224 first choices 171 places 2022/23 1.67 per place 282 first choices 169 places 2023/24 1.85 per place 316 first choices 171 places 2024/25 1.93 per place 330 first choices 171 places 2025/26 1.9 per place 319 first choices 168 places 2026/27 1.77 per place 305 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at Bonus Pastor Catholic College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 305 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bonus Pastor Catholic College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 150 159 114 1.06
2016/17 147 216 103 1.47
2017/18 174 224 129 1.29
2018/19 172 213 123 1.24
2019/20 172 288 135 1.67
2020/21 172 244 140 1.42
2021/22 171 224 128 1.31
2022/23 169 282 139 1.67
2023/24 171 316 140 1.85
2024/25 171 330 148 1.93
2025/26 168 319 143 1.9
2026/27 172 305 151 1.77

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

305

686 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

49.5%

151 of 305

Offers to families outside the council

20%

35 of 172 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 100752.

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

866

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

913

105.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

47

reported as full or beyond

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 Bonus Pastor Catholic College 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 Bonus Pastor Catholic College was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bonus Pastor Catholic College 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 2009/10 844 places 750 on roll 2010/11 844 places 746 on roll 2011/12 750 places 750 on roll 2012/13 750 places 759 on roll 2013/14 750 places 763 on roll 2014/15 750 places 762 on roll 2015/16 776 places 766 on roll 2016/17 776 places 764 on roll 2017/18 776 places 788 on roll 2018/19 776 places 815 on roll 2020/21 866 places 895 on roll 2021/22 866 places 924 on roll 2022/23 866 places 916 on roll 2023/24 866 places 915 on roll 2024/25 866 places 913 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lewisham

Postcode BR1 5PZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150605).

Other contested secondary schools in Lewisham

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.