School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Ambrose Barlow RC High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named St Ambrose Barlow RC High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 203 and 220 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

220 first preferences for 203 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Ambrose Barlow RC High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Ambrose Barlow RC 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 Salford 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 Salford, 14.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 56 of 395 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 Salford.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Salford 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 Ambrose Barlow RC High School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 2 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 St Ambrose Barlow RC 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 1.31 per place 235 first choices 179 places 2016/17 1.08 per place 225 first choices 209 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 245 first choices 208 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 199 first choices 209 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 232 first choices 209 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 203 first choices 210 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 166 first choices 208 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 189 first choices 224 places 2023/24 0.75 per place 155 first choices 207 places 2024/25 0.75 per place 157 first choices 209 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 194 first choices 208 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 220 first choices 203 places
First preferences per place at St Ambrose Barlow RC High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 220 first preferences for 203 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Ambrose Barlow RC 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
2015/16 179 235 171 1.31
2016/17 209 225 197 1.08
2017/18 208 245 202 1.18
2018/19 209 199 178 0.95
2019/20 209 232 189 1.11
2020/21 210 203 178 0.97
2021/22 208 166 166 0.8
2022/23 224 189 189 0.84
2023/24 207 155 155 0.75
2024/25 209 157 156 0.75
2025/26 208 194 180 0.93
2026/27 203 220 184 1.08

Places offered

203

in 2026/27

Named first choice

220

459 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.6%

184 of 220

Offers to families outside the council

3%

7 of 203 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

1,080

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,077

99.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

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 Ambrose Barlow RC 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 Ambrose Barlow RC High School reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.7% 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 St Ambrose Barlow RC High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 744 places 727 on roll 2010/11 744 places 738 on roll 2011/12 744 places 742 on roll 2012/13 750 places 745 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 897 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,094 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,031 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,101 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,133 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,093 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,035 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,045 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,080 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,075 on roll 2024/25 1,080 places 1,077 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 Ambrose Barlow RC High School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Ambrose Barlow RC High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
16 July 2014 No fault found VAR636
24 July 2013 No fault found VAR605

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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Salford

Postcode M27 9QP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 105989).

Other contested secondary schools in Salford

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.