School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Peter's Catholic College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 52 families who named St Peter's Catholic College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 123 and 172 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.

1.40

first choices for every place available

172 first preferences for 123 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Peter's Catholic College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Peter's Catholic 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 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

St Peter's Catholic College turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Peter's Catholic 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 1.11 per place 109 first choices 98 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 113 first choices 103 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 132 first choices 105 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 115 first choices 104 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 86 first choices 96 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 83 first choices 90 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 93 first choices 95 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 129 first choices 115 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 136 first choices 128 places 2024/25 1.39 per place 170 first choices 122 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 145 first choices 113 places 2026/27 1.4 per place 172 first choices 123 places
First preferences per place at St Peter's Catholic College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 172 first preferences for 123 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Peter's Catholic 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 98 109 96 1.11
2016/17 103 113 100 1.1
2017/18 105 132 99 1.26
2018/19 104 115 95 1.11
2019/20 96 86 86 0.9
2020/21 90 83 83 0.92
2021/22 95 93 92 0.98
2022/23 115 129 110 1.12
2023/24 128 136 126 1.06
2024/25 122 170 118 1.39
2025/26 113 145 110 1.28
2026/27 123 172 120 1.4

Places offered

123

in 2026/27

Named first choice

172

263 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.8%

120 of 172

Offers to families outside the council

20%

25 of 123 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

525

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

563

107.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

38

reported as full or beyond

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 Peter's Catholic 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 Peter's Catholic College 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Peter's Catholic College from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 525 places 409 on roll 2014/15 525 places 452 on roll 2015/16 525 places 487 on roll 2016/17 525 places 508 on roll 2017/18 525 places 527 on roll 2018/19 525 places 523 on roll 2020/21 525 places 530 on roll 2021/22 525 places 528 on roll 2022/23 525 places 533 on roll 2023/24 525 places 551 on roll 2024/25 525 places 563 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 TS6 6SP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140751).

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.