School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 115 families who named Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 219 and 299 put it first.

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

1.37

first choices for every place available

299 first preferences for 219 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Cardinal Heenan 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 Liverpool 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 Liverpool, 8.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 185 of 2,150 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 Liverpool.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Liverpool 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

Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 4 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Cardinal Heenan 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 0.81 per place 193 first choices 239 places 2016/17 0.81 per place 192 first choices 237 places 2017/18 0.77 per place 183 first choices 239 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 235 first choices 239 places 2019/20 0.81 per place 193 first choices 238 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 209 first choices 238 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 191 first choices 209 places 2022/23 1.16 per place 240 first choices 207 places 2023/24 1.3 per place 284 first choices 219 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 330 first choices 244 places 2025/26 1.5 per place 325 first choices 217 places 2026/27 1.37 per place 299 first choices 219 places
First preferences per place at Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 299 first preferences for 219 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Cardinal Heenan 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
2015/16 239 193 183 0.81
2016/17 237 192 173 0.81
2017/18 239 183 165 0.77
2018/19 239 235 182 0.98
2019/20 238 193 170 0.81
2020/21 238 209 167 0.88
2021/22 209 191 153 0.91
2022/23 207 240 153 1.16
2023/24 219 284 181 1.3
2024/25 244 330 216 1.35
2025/26 217 325 191 1.5
2026/27 219 299 184 1.37

Places offered

219

in 2026/27

Named first choice

299

650 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.5%

184 of 299

Offers to families outside the council

19%

41 of 219 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

1,152

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,151

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

190

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 Cardinal Heenan 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 Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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 Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,394 places 1,415 on roll 2010/11 1,391 places 1,429 on roll 2011/12 1,391 places 1,401 on roll 2012/13 1,391 places 1,368 on roll 2013/14 1,391 places 1,353 on roll 2014/15 1,391 places 1,287 on roll 2015/16 1,392 places 1,302 on roll 2016/17 1,392 places 1,326 on roll 2017/18 1,392 places 1,327 on roll 2018/19 1,392 places 1,309 on roll 2020/21 1,368 places 1,363 on roll 2021/22 1,342 places 1,384 on roll 2022/23 1,342 places 1,363 on roll 2023/24 1,342 places 1,336 on roll 2024/25 1,342 places 1,319 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
Liverpool

Postcode L12 9HZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 104714).

Other contested secondary schools in Liverpool

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.