School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sacred Heart Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 112 families who named Sacred Heart Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 225 and 322 put it first.

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

1.43

first choices for every place available

322 first preferences for 225 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sacred Heart Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sacred Heart 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 Newcastle upon Tyne 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 Newcastle upon Tyne, 32.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 154 of 480 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 Newcastle upon Tyne.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Newcastle upon Tyne 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

Sacred Heart Catholic High School 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 Sacred Heart 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 1.29 per place 287 first choices 222 places 2016/17 1.52 per place 335 first choices 220 places 2017/18 1.38 per place 301 first choices 218 places 2018/19 1.79 per place 400 first choices 224 places 2019/20 1.57 per place 351 first choices 223 places 2020/21 1.82 per place 409 first choices 225 places 2021/22 1.66 per place 374 first choices 225 places 2022/23 1.7 per place 382 first choices 225 places 2023/24 1.49 per place 330 first choices 222 places 2024/25 1.53 per place 342 first choices 224 places 2025/26 1.35 per place 342 first choices 253 places 2026/27 1.43 per place 322 first choices 225 places
First preferences per place at Sacred Heart Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 322 first preferences for 225 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sacred Heart 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
2015/16 222 287 220 1.29
2016/17 220 335 216 1.52
2017/18 218 301 212 1.38
2018/19 224 400 222 1.79
2019/20 223 351 209 1.57
2020/21 225 409 203 1.82
2021/22 225 374 216 1.66
2022/23 225 382 216 1.7
2023/24 222 330 197 1.49
2024/25 224 342 208 1.53
2025/26 253 342 228 1.35
2026/27 225 322 210 1.43

Places offered

225

in 2026/27

Named first choice

322

575 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

65.2%

210 of 322

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 225 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

1,125

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,132

100.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

7

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

260

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 Sacred Heart 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 Sacred Heart Catholic 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sacred Heart Catholic High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,385 places 1,408 on roll 2012/13 1,385 places 1,409 on roll 2013/14 1,385 places 1,445 on roll 2014/15 1,385 places 1,375 on roll 2015/16 1,385 places 1,377 on roll 2016/17 1,385 places 1,408 on roll 2017/18 1,385 places 1,400 on roll 2018/19 1,385 places 1,403 on roll 2020/21 1,385 places 1,423 on roll 2021/22 1,385 places 1,412 on roll 2022/23 1,385 places 1,391 on roll 2023/24 1,385 places 1,381 on roll 2024/25 1,385 places 1,391 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. Sacred Heart Catholic High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Sacred Heart Catholic High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
21 August 2017 Arrangements did not comply ADA3333

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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Newcastle upon Tyne

Postcode NE4 9YH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137708).

Other contested secondary schools in Newcastle upon Tyne

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.