School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Anne's Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named St Anne's Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: 167 put it first and 166 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

167 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Anne's Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Anne's Catholic 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 Southampton 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 Southampton, 27.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 69 of 249 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 Southampton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Southampton 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 Anne's Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at St Anne's Catholic 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 0.94 per place 198 first choices 210 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 194 first choices 200 places 2017/18 1.05 per place 219 first choices 209 places 2018/19 1.04 per place 217 first choices 209 places 2019/20 1.19 per place 246 first choices 206 places 2020/21 1.09 per place 225 first choices 207 places 2021/22 1.03 per place 205 first choices 199 places 2022/23 0.82 per place 187 first choices 227 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 191 first choices 211 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 228 first choices 206 places 2025/26 0.81 per place 166 first choices 205 places 2026/27 0.81 per place 167 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at St Anne's Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 167 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Anne's Catholic School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 210 198 192 0.94
2016/17 200 194 193 0.97
2017/18 209 219 202 1.05
2018/19 209 217 199 1.04
2019/20 206 246 186 1.19
2020/21 207 225 191 1.09
2021/22 199 205 174 1.03
2022/23 227 187 187 0.82
2023/24 211 191 185 0.91
2024/25 206 228 184 1.11
2025/26 205 166 160 0.81
2026/27 205 167 166 0.81

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

167

350 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.4%

166 of 167

Offers to families outside the council

8%

16 of 200 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,081

103% of capacity

Over its capacity by

31

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

150

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 Anne's Catholic 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 Anne's Catholic 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 Anne's Catholic School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,079 places 1,123 on roll 2013/14 1,079 places 1,110 on roll 2014/15 1,079 places 1,066 on roll 2015/16 1,079 places 1,073 on roll 2016/17 1,079 places 1,075 on roll 2017/18 1,079 places 1,125 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,196 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,179 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,212 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,227 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,237 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,228 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
Southampton

Postcode SO15 2WZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138476).

Other contested secondary schools in Southampton

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.