School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Peter's RC High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 58 families who named St Peter's RC High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 187 and 223 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

223 first preferences for 187 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Peter's RC High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Peter's RC 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 Manchester 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 Manchester, 17.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 202 of 1,159 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 Manchester.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Manchester 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 Peter's RC High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 10 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 Peter's RC 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 1.18 per place 236 first choices 200 places 2016/17 0.92 per place 184 first choices 200 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 195 first choices 197 places 2018/19 1.18 per place 233 first choices 197 places 2019/20 1.18 per place 232 first choices 197 places 2020/21 1.16 per place 226 first choices 194 places 2021/22 1.19 per place 238 first choices 200 places 2022/23 1.03 per place 200 first choices 194 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 196 first choices 189 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 205 first choices 188 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 227 first choices 184 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 223 first choices 187 places
First preferences per place at St Peter's RC High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 223 first preferences for 187 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Peter's RC 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
2015/16 200 236 162 1.18
2016/17 200 184 165 0.92
2017/18 197 195 156 0.99
2018/19 197 233 160 1.18
2019/20 197 232 156 1.18
2020/21 194 226 144 1.16
2021/22 200 238 159 1.19
2022/23 194 200 167 1.03
2023/24 189 196 161 1.04
2024/25 188 205 161 1.09
2025/26 184 227 153 1.23
2026/27 187 223 165 1.19

Places offered

187

in 2026/27

Named first choice

223

774 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74%

165 of 223

Offers to families outside the council

5%

9 of 187 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,032

103.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

32

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 St Peter's RC 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 Peter's RC High School 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 St Peter's RC High School 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 864 on roll 2010/11 900 places 880 on roll 2011/12 900 places 892 on roll 2012/13 900 places 897 on roll 2013/14 920 places 904 on roll 2014/15 920 places 917 on roll 2015/16 920 places 931 on roll 2016/17 940 places 951 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 968 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 983 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 1,021 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 1,031 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 1,053 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 1,048 on roll 2024/25 1,000 places 1,032 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
Manchester

Postcode M12 4WB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 131880).

Other contested secondary schools in Manchester

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.