School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School?

In 2026/27, Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School offered 174 places and 132 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.76

first choices for every place available

132 first preferences for 174 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic 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 Reading 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 Reading, 7.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 14 of 180 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 Reading.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Reading 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

Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 3 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 Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic 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 1.39 per place 198 first choices 142 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 161 first choices 147 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 164 first choices 141 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 150 first choices 151 places 2019/20 0.72 per place 128 first choices 178 places 2020/21 1.05 per place 187 first choices 178 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 145 first choices 182 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 165 first choices 172 places 2023/24 1 per place 186 first choices 186 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 185 first choices 177 places 2025/26 0.89 per place 160 first choices 179 places 2026/27 0.76 per place 132 first choices 174 places
First preferences per place at Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 132 first preferences for 174 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 142 198 133 1.39
2016/17 147 161 137 1.1
2017/18 141 164 123 1.16
2018/19 151 150 116 0.99
2019/20 178 128 119 0.72
2020/21 178 187 146 1.05
2021/22 182 145 134 0.8
2022/23 172 165 138 0.96
2023/24 186 186 147 1
2024/25 177 185 154 1.05
2025/26 179 160 153 0.89
2026/27 174 132 132 0.76

Places offered

174

in 2026/27

Named first choice

132

345 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

132 of 132

Offers to families outside the council

6%

10 of 174 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

920

102.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

20

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

172

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 Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic 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 Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic 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 Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic 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 2009/10 779 places 779 on roll 2010/11 779 places 847 on roll 2011/12 779 places 863 on roll 2012/13 779 places 822 on roll 2013/14 825 places 855 on roll 2014/15 779 places 855 on roll 2015/16 779 places 863 on roll 2016/17 992 places 885 on roll 2017/18 922 places 847 on roll 2018/19 922 places 814 on roll 2020/21 922 places 907 on roll 2021/22 922 places 951 on roll 2022/23 922 places 990 on roll 2023/24 922 places 1,014 on roll 2024/25 1,072 places 1,045 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
Reading

Postcode RG30 3EP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 110107).

Other contested secondary schools in Reading

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.