School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Bernard's High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 41 families who named St Bernard's High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 175 and 184 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

184 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Bernard's High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Bernard's 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 Southend-on-Sea 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 Southend-on-Sea, 4.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 13 of 277 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 Southend-on-Sea.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Southend-on-Sea 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 High School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 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 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 1.25 per place 179 first choices 143 places 2016/17 1.16 per place 165 first choices 142 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 171 first choices 144 places 2018/19 1.4 per place 201 first choices 144 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 166 first choices 173 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 222 first choices 194 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 138 first choices 173 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 160 first choices 178 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 194 first choices 172 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 171 first choices 173 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 179 first choices 168 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 184 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at St Bernard's High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 184 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Bernard's 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
2015/16 143 179 125 1.25
2016/17 142 165 95 1.16
2017/18 144 171 107 1.19
2018/19 144 201 94 1.4
2019/20 173 166 137 0.96
2020/21 194 222 156 1.14
2021/22 173 138 107 0.8
2022/23 178 160 146 0.9
2023/24 172 194 139 1.13
2024/25 173 171 150 0.99
2025/26 168 179 136 1.07
2026/27 175 184 143 1.05

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

184

474 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.7%

143 of 184

Offers to families outside the council

26%

45 of 175 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

825

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

870

105.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

45

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 Bernard's 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 Bernard's 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Bernard's High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 866 places 882 on roll 2012/13 866 places 884 on roll 2013/14 880 places 898 on roll 2014/15 890 places 884 on roll 2015/16 890 places 879 on roll 2016/17 890 places 872 on roll 2017/18 890 places 852 on roll 2018/19 890 places 851 on roll 2020/21 930 places 929 on roll 2021/22 975 places 964 on roll 2022/23 975 places 967 on roll 2023/24 975 places 992 on roll 2024/25 975 places 1,022 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
Southend-on-Sea

Postcode SS0 7JS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137312).

Other contested secondary schools in Southend-on-Sea

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.