School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St John Bosco Arts College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 37 families who named St John Bosco Arts College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 193 and 206 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

206 first preferences for 193 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St John Bosco Arts College

There is no published appeal success rate for St John Bosco Arts 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 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

St John Bosco Arts College turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 2 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 St John Bosco Arts 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 0.89 per place 125 first choices 141 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 160 first choices 180 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 167 first choices 179 places 2018/19 0.82 per place 146 first choices 178 places 2019/20 0.95 per place 171 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 223 first choices 180 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 178 first choices 176 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 233 first choices 180 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 186 first choices 183 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 179 first choices 181 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 195 first choices 206 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 206 first choices 193 places
First preferences per place at St John Bosco Arts College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 206 first preferences for 193 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St John Bosco Arts College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 141 125 125 0.89
2016/17 180 160 160 0.89
2017/18 179 167 154 0.93
2018/19 178 146 146 0.82
2019/20 180 171 153 0.95
2020/21 180 223 153 1.24
2021/22 176 178 152 1.01
2022/23 180 233 161 1.29
2023/24 183 186 152 1.02
2024/25 181 179 161 0.99
2025/26 206 195 183 0.95
2026/27 193 206 169 1.07

Places offered

193

in 2026/27

Named first choice

206

423 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82%

169 of 206

Offers to families outside the council

7%

14 of 193 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

918

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

883

96.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

35

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

166

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 John Bosco Arts 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 St John Bosco Arts College reported 35 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.2% 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 John Bosco Arts College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,064 places 1,022 on roll 2010/11 1,075 places 996 on roll 2011/12 1,075 places 933 on roll 2012/13 1,075 places 872 on roll 2013/14 1,075 places 838 on roll 2014/15 1,075 places 797 on roll 2015/16 1,084 places 832 on roll 2016/17 1,084 places 883 on roll 2017/18 1,084 places 864 on roll 2018/19 1,084 places 904 on roll 2020/21 1,084 places 1,059 on roll 2021/22 1,084 places 1,078 on roll 2022/23 1,084 places 1,065 on roll 2023/24 1,084 places 1,065 on roll 2024/25 1,084 places 1,046 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. St John Bosco Arts College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming St John Bosco Arts College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 February 2014 No fault found VAR624

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 L11 9DQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 104715).

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.