School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Angela's Ursuline School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 5 families who named St Angela's Ursuline School as their first choice did not get a place: 150 put it first and 145 of them were offered one.

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

5

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

150 first preferences for 190 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Angela's Ursuline School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Angela's Ursuline 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 Newham 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 Newham, 3.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 24 of 626 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 Newham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Newham 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 Angela's Ursuline School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 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 Angela's Ursuline 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 1.15 per place 211 first choices 183 places 2016/17 1.34 per place 249 first choices 186 places 2017/18 1.13 per place 210 first choices 186 places 2018/19 0.92 per place 176 first choices 192 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 185 first choices 189 places 2020/21 0.63 per place 120 first choices 190 places 2021/22 0.69 per place 133 first choices 192 places 2022/23 0.64 per place 122 first choices 192 places 2023/24 0.58 per place 111 first choices 191 places 2024/25 0.85 per place 162 first choices 191 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 179 first choices 189 places 2026/27 0.79 per place 150 first choices 190 places
First preferences per place at St Angela's Ursuline School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 150 first preferences for 190 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Angela's Ursuline School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 183 211 170 1.15
2016/17 186 249 177 1.34
2017/18 186 210 171 1.13
2018/19 192 176 161 0.92
2019/20 189 185 158 0.98
2020/21 190 120 120 0.63
2021/22 192 133 133 0.69
2022/23 192 122 122 0.64
2023/24 191 111 111 0.58
2024/25 191 162 146 0.85
2025/26 189 179 147 0.95
2026/27 190 150 145 0.79

Places offered

190

in 2026/27

Named first choice

150

426 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.7%

145 of 150

Offers to families outside the council

13%

25 of 190 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

1,004

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

933

92.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

71

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

357

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 Angela's Ursuline 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 Angela's Ursuline School reported 71 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.9% 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 St Angela's Ursuline School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,344 places 1,723 on roll 2010/11 1,344 places 1,740 on roll 2011/12 1,344 places 1,744 on roll 2012/13 1,344 places 1,370 on roll 2013/14 1,370 places 1,369 on roll 2014/15 1,361 places 1,357 on roll 2015/16 1,361 places 1,352 on roll 2016/17 1,361 places 1,324 on roll 2017/18 1,361 places 1,302 on roll 2018/19 1,361 places 1,286 on roll 2020/21 1,361 places 1,280 on roll 2021/22 1,361 places 1,249 on roll 2022/23 1,361 places 1,288 on roll 2023/24 1,361 places 1,288 on roll 2024/25 1,361 places 1,288 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 Angela's Ursuline School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Angela's Ursuline School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 August 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2607

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
Newham

Postcode E7 8HU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 102786).

Other contested secondary schools in Newham

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.