School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Bernard's Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 108 families who named St Bernard's Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 146 and 254 put it first.

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

1.74

first choices for every place available

254 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Bernard's Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Bernard's Catholic High 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 Rotherham 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 Rotherham, 50.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 232 of 460 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 Rotherham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Rotherham 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 Bernard's Catholic High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at St Bernard's Catholic High 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 162 first choices 141 places 2016/17 1.15 per place 160 first choices 139 places 2017/18 1.22 per place 169 first choices 138 places 2018/19 1.29 per place 179 first choices 139 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 172 first choices 155 places 2020/21 1.3 per place 199 first choices 153 places 2021/22 1.36 per place 202 first choices 148 places 2022/23 1.34 per place 198 first choices 148 places 2023/24 1.54 per place 232 first choices 151 places 2024/25 1.48 per place 218 first choices 147 places 2025/26 1.71 per place 255 first choices 149 places 2026/27 1.74 per place 254 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at St Bernard's Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 254 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Bernard's Catholic High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 141 162 136 1.15
2016/17 139 160 134 1.15
2017/18 138 169 130 1.22
2018/19 139 179 130 1.29
2019/20 155 172 140 1.11
2020/21 153 199 146 1.3
2021/22 148 202 143 1.36
2022/23 148 198 145 1.34
2023/24 151 232 148 1.54
2024/25 147 218 146 1.48
2025/26 149 255 148 1.71
2026/27 146 254 146 1.74

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

254

424 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

57.5%

146 of 254

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 146 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

811

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

818

100.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

7

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 Bernard's Catholic High 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 Bernard's Catholic High 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Bernard's Catholic High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 792 places 693 on roll 2013/14 792 places 689 on roll 2014/15 700 places 705 on roll 2015/16 700 places 698 on roll 2016/17 700 places 696 on roll 2017/18 700 places 691 on roll 2018/19 700 places 689 on roll 2020/21 700 places 742 on roll 2021/22 700 places 771 on roll 2022/23 700 places 787 on roll 2023/24 730 places 815 on roll 2024/25 811 places 818 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 Bernard's Catholic High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Bernard's Catholic High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
4 July 2023 Arrangements did not comply REF4144

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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Rotherham

Postcode S65 3BE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138329).

Other contested secondary schools in Rotherham

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.