School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sacred Heart Catholic Secondary?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named Sacred Heart Catholic Secondary as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 146 and 167 put it first.

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

1.14

first choices for every place available

167 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sacred Heart Catholic Secondary

There is no published appeal success rate for Sacred Heart Catholic Secondary, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Redcar and Cleveland 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 Redcar and Cleveland, 17.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 117 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 Redcar and Cleveland.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Redcar and Cleveland 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 Secondary turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Sacred Heart Catholic Secondary, 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 0.99 per place 152 first choices 153 places 2016/17 1.23 per place 185 first choices 151 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 155 first choices 153 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 164 first choices 145 places 2019/20 1.15 per place 166 first choices 144 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 142 first choices 146 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 139 first choices 143 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 137 first choices 148 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 142 first choices 145 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 156 first choices 151 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 154 first choices 146 places 2026/27 1.14 per place 167 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at Sacred Heart Catholic Secondary. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 167 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sacred Heart Catholic Secondary, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 153 152 152 0.99
2016/17 151 185 150 1.23
2017/18 153 155 151 1.01
2018/19 145 164 144 1.13
2019/20 144 166 135 1.15
2020/21 146 142 140 0.97
2021/22 143 139 139 0.97
2022/23 148 137 136 0.93
2023/24 145 142 142 0.98
2024/25 151 156 151 1.03
2025/26 146 154 142 1.05
2026/27 146 167 145 1.14

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

167

249 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.8%

145 of 167

Offers to families outside the council

3%

4 of 146 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 111763.

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

837

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

737

88.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

100

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 Sacred Heart Catholic Secondary 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 Secondary reported 100 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.1% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sacred Heart Catholic Secondary from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 886 places 760 on roll 2010/11 886 places 753 on roll 2011/12 837 places 742 on roll 2012/13 837 places 738 on roll 2013/14 837 places 738 on roll 2014/15 837 places 735 on roll 2015/16 750 places 737 on roll 2016/17 837 places 730 on roll 2017/18 837 places 747 on roll 2018/19 837 places 744 on roll 2020/21 837 places 732 on roll 2021/22 837 places 722 on roll 2022/23 837 places 717 on roll 2023/24 837 places 731 on roll 2024/25 837 places 737 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Redcar and Cleveland

Postcode TS10 1PJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142273).

Other contested secondary schools in Redcar and Cleveland

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.