School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Boniface's RC College?

In 2026/27, St Boniface's RC College offered 61 places and 60 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.98

first choices for every place available

60 first preferences for 61 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Boniface's RC College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Boniface's RC 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 Plymouth 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 Plymouth, 17.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 35 of 201 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 Plymouth.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Plymouth 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 Boniface's RC College turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at St Boniface's RC 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 0.91 per place 69 first choices 76 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 68 first choices 78 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 69 first choices 75 places 2018/19 0.64 per place 56 first choices 88 places 2019/20 0.78 per place 47 first choices 60 places 2020/21 0.64 per place 48 first choices 75 places 2021/22 0.43 per place 27 first choices 63 places 2022/23 0.67 per place 43 first choices 64 places 2023/24 0.78 per place 61 first choices 78 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 76 first choices 73 places 2025/26 0.88 per place 63 first choices 72 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 60 first choices 61 places
First preferences per place at St Boniface's RC College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 60 first preferences for 61 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Boniface's RC 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 76 69 69 0.91
2016/17 78 68 68 0.87
2017/18 75 69 69 0.92
2018/19 88 56 56 0.64
2019/20 60 47 47 0.78
2020/21 75 48 47 0.64
2021/22 63 27 27 0.43
2022/23 64 43 43 0.67
2023/24 78 61 60 0.78
2024/25 73 76 64 1.04
2025/26 72 63 62 0.88
2026/27 61 60 60 0.98

Places offered

61

in 2026/27

Named first choice

60

143 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

60 of 60

Offers to families outside the council

8%

5 of 61 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

929

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

391

42.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

538

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 St Boniface's RC 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 Boniface's RC College reported 538 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 42.1% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Boniface's RC College from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 959 places 717 on roll 2014/15 929 places 636 on roll 2015/16 929 places 620 on roll 2016/17 929 places 557 on roll 2017/18 929 places 442 on roll 2018/19 929 places 372 on roll 2020/21 929 places 353 on roll 2021/22 929 places 333 on roll 2022/23 929 places 360 on roll 2023/24 929 places 376 on roll 2024/25 929 places 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.

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
Plymouth

Postcode PL5 3AG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140693).

Other contested secondary schools in Plymouth

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.