School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at All Saints' Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 37 families who named All Saints' Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 205 and 211 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

211 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at All Saints' Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for All Saints' 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 Sheffield 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 Sheffield, 26.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 181 of 672 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 Sheffield.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sheffield 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

All Saints' 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 All Saints' 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 1.45 per place 295 first choices 203 places 2016/17 1.5 per place 305 first choices 204 places 2017/18 1.31 per place 268 first choices 205 places 2018/19 1.18 per place 242 first choices 205 places 2019/20 1.26 per place 257 first choices 204 places 2020/21 1.36 per place 277 first choices 203 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 239 first choices 197 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 254 first choices 205 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 281 first choices 204 places 2024/25 1.26 per place 254 first choices 202 places 2025/26 1.25 per place 256 first choices 204 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 211 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at All Saints' Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 211 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at All Saints' 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
2015/16 203 295 194 1.45
2016/17 204 305 187 1.5
2017/18 205 268 194 1.31
2018/19 205 242 172 1.18
2019/20 204 257 180 1.26
2020/21 203 277 189 1.36
2021/22 197 239 169 1.21
2022/23 205 254 176 1.24
2023/24 204 281 197 1.38
2024/25 202 254 193 1.26
2025/26 204 256 189 1.25
2026/27 205 211 174 1.03

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

211

426 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.5%

174 of 211

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 205 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria All Saints' Catholic High School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for All Saints' Catholic High School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Catholic looked after and previously looked after children. (see notes 2&3)
2 Catholic children who attend a designated feeder school. (see notes 3&4)
3 Other Catholic children. (see note 3)
4 Other looked after and previously looked after children. (see note 2)
5 Catechumens and members of an Eastern Christian Church who attend a designated feeder school. (see notes 4,5&6)
6 Other catechumens and members of an Eastern Christian Church. (see notes 5&6)
7 Children of other Christian denominations whose membership is evidenced by a minister of religion who attend a designated feeder school. (see notes 4&7)
8 Other children of other Christian denominations whose membership is evidenced by a minister of religion. (see note 7)
9 Children of other faiths whose membership is evidenced by a religious leader who attend a designated feeder school. (see notes 4&8)
10 Other children of other faiths whose membership is evidenced by a religious leader. (see

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

All Saints' Catholic High School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,103

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,026

93% of capacity

Unfilled places

77

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

320

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 All Saints' 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 All Saints' Catholic High School reported 77 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at All Saints' Catholic High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,290 places 1,385 on roll 2013/14 1,290 places 1,386 on roll 2014/15 1,290 places 1,352 on roll 2015/16 1,290 places 1,325 on roll 2016/17 1,290 places 1,335 on roll 2017/18 1,290 places 1,369 on roll 2018/19 1,290 places 1,405 on roll 2020/21 1,290 places 1,432 on roll 2021/22 1,290 places 1,423 on roll 2022/23 1,290 places 1,372 on roll 2023/24 1,290 places 1,386 on roll 2024/25 1,423 places 1,382 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
Sheffield

Postcode S2 2RJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138337).

Other contested secondary schools in Sheffield

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.