School Admission Appeals

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

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 110 families who named St Bernard's Catholic Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 150 and 178 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

178 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Bernard's Catholic Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Bernard's Catholic Grammar 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 Slough 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 Slough, 6.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 88 of 1,349 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 Slough.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Slough 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 Grammar School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 9 of those years. In the other 3 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 Bernard's Catholic Grammar 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 1.47 per place 176 first choices 120 places 2016/17 1.74 per place 205 first choices 118 places 2017/18 1.47 per place 172 first choices 117 places 2018/19 1.33 per place 161 first choices 121 places 2019/20 1.28 per place 171 first choices 134 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 141 first choices 144 places 2021/22 1.63 per place 228 first choices 140 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 131 first choices 141 places 2023/24 0.85 per place 128 first choices 150 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 153 first choices 150 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 181 first choices 150 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 178 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at St Bernard's Catholic Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 178 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Bernard's Catholic Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 120 176 95 1.47
2016/17 118 205 92 1.74
2017/18 117 172 87 1.47
2018/19 121 161 84 1.33
2019/20 134 171 80 1.28
2020/21 144 141 78 0.98
2021/22 140 228 66 1.63
2022/23 141 131 63 0.93
2023/24 150 128 56 0.85
2024/25 150 153 62 1.02
2025/26 150 181 68 1.21
2026/27 150 178 68 1.19

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

178

1,024 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

38.2%

68 of 178

Offers to families outside the council

83%

124 of 150 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

897

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

792

88.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

105

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Grammar 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 Grammar School reported 105 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.3% 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 Bernard's Catholic Grammar 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 2009/10 894 places 862 on roll 2010/11 894 places 842 on roll 2011/12 894 places 876 on roll 2012/13 894 places 881 on roll 2013/14 894 places 875 on roll 2014/15 894 places 859 on roll 2015/16 894 places 855 on roll 2016/17 894 places 833 on roll 2017/18 894 places 804 on roll 2018/19 894 places 832 on roll 2020/21 994 places 972 on roll 2021/22 994 places 1,054 on roll 2022/23 994 places 1,091 on roll 2023/24 994 places 1,130 on roll 2024/25 1,147 places 1,131 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 Grammar 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 Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
17 January 2020 Arrangements did not comply ADA3528

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
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Slough

Postcode SL3 7AF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 110084).

Other contested secondary schools in Slough

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.