School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Academy of St Francis of Assisi?

In 2026/27, The Academy of St Francis of Assisi offered 169 places and 98 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.58

first choices for every place available

98 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Academy of St Francis of Assisi

There is no published appeal success rate for The Academy of St Francis of Assisi, 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

The Academy of St Francis of Assisi turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 The Academy of St Francis of Assisi, 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 0.67 per place 69 first choices 103 places 2016/17 0.61 per place 79 first choices 130 places 2017/18 0.48 per place 78 first choices 164 places 2018/19 0.5 per place 76 first choices 152 places 2019/20 0.44 per place 79 first choices 179 places 2020/21 0.62 per place 112 first choices 180 places 2021/22 0.73 per place 131 first choices 180 places 2022/23 0.77 per place 138 first choices 179 places 2023/24 0.71 per place 132 first choices 187 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 170 first choices 181 places 2025/26 0.83 per place 142 first choices 172 places 2026/27 0.58 per place 98 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at The Academy of St Francis of Assisi. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 98 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Academy of St Francis of Assisi, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 103 69 69 0.67
2016/17 130 79 79 0.61
2017/18 164 78 78 0.48
2018/19 152 76 76 0.5
2019/20 179 79 79 0.44
2020/21 180 112 110 0.62
2021/22 180 131 129 0.73
2022/23 179 138 130 0.77
2023/24 187 132 126 0.71
2024/25 181 170 142 0.94
2025/26 172 142 130 0.83
2026/27 169 98 98 0.58

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

98

255 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

98 of 98

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 137 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 101857.

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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

877

97.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

23

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 The Academy of St Francis of Assisi 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 The Academy of St Francis of Assisi reported 23 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.4% 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 The Academy of St Francis of Assisi 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 2009/10 900 places 836 on roll 2010/11 900 places 855 on roll 2011/12 900 places 846 on roll 2012/13 900 places 824 on roll 2013/14 1,080 places 862 on roll 2014/15 1,080 places 908 on roll 2015/16 1,080 places 881 on roll 2016/17 1,080 places 882 on roll 2017/18 1,080 places 794 on roll 2018/19 900 places 804 on roll 2020/21 900 places 872 on roll 2021/22 900 places 863 on roll 2022/23 900 places 886 on roll 2023/24 900 places 906 on roll 2024/25 900 places 877 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Liverpool

Postcode L6 7UR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144493).

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.