School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Notre Dame High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 61 families who named Notre Dame High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 210 and 260 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

260 first preferences for 210 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Notre Dame High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Notre Dame 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

Notre Dame 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 Notre Dame 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 1.33 per place 276 first choices 207 places 2016/17 1.4 per place 301 first choices 215 places 2017/18 1.28 per place 276 first choices 216 places 2018/19 1.42 per place 302 first choices 213 places 2019/20 1.5 per place 312 first choices 208 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 261 first choices 210 places 2021/22 1.42 per place 281 first choices 198 places 2022/23 1.35 per place 275 first choices 204 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 255 first choices 210 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 227 first choices 209 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 225 first choices 210 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 260 first choices 210 places
First preferences per place at Notre Dame High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 260 first preferences for 210 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Notre Dame 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
2015/16 207 276 204 1.33
2016/17 215 301 209 1.4
2017/18 216 276 213 1.28
2018/19 213 302 210 1.42
2019/20 208 312 206 1.5
2020/21 210 261 206 1.24
2021/22 198 281 191 1.42
2022/23 204 275 198 1.35
2023/24 210 255 208 1.21
2024/25 209 227 203 1.09
2025/26 210 225 200 1.07
2026/27 210 260 199 1.24

Places offered

210

in 2026/27

Named first choice

260

488 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.5%

199 of 260

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 210 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,064

106.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

64

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

328

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 Notre Dame 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 Notre Dame 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 Notre Dame High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,328 places 1,382 on roll 2013/14 1,328 places 1,382 on roll 2014/15 1,328 places 1,405 on roll 2015/16 1,328 places 1,416 on roll 2016/17 1,328 places 1,456 on roll 2017/18 1,378 places 1,452 on roll 2018/19 1,328 places 1,453 on roll 2020/21 1,328 places 1,558 on roll 2021/22 1,328 places 1,520 on roll 2022/23 1,328 places 1,496 on roll 2023/24 1,328 places 1,482 on roll 2024/25 1,328 places 1,488 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 S10 3BT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138361).

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.