School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The St Thomas the Apostle College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 64 families who named The St Thomas the Apostle College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 150 and 181 put it first.

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

1.21

first choices for every place available

181 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The St Thomas the Apostle College

There is no published appeal success rate for The St Thomas the Apostle College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Southwark 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 Southwark, 15.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 85 of 547 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 Southwark.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Southwark 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

The St Thomas the Apostle College turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 5 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 The St Thomas the Apostle College, 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 0.41 per place 45 first choices 111 places 2016/17 0.46 per place 68 first choices 149 places 2017/18 0.71 per place 107 first choices 151 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 181 first choices 152 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 155 first choices 151 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 166 first choices 148 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 150 first choices 148 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 139 first choices 146 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 146 first choices 148 places 2024/25 0.83 per place 125 first choices 150 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 137 first choices 150 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 181 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at The St Thomas the Apostle College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 181 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The St Thomas the Apostle College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 111 45 45 0.41
2016/17 149 68 68 0.46
2017/18 151 107 95 0.71
2018/19 152 181 94 1.19
2019/20 151 155 100 1.03
2020/21 148 166 106 1.12
2021/22 148 150 103 1.01
2022/23 146 139 107 0.95
2023/24 148 146 110 0.99
2024/25 150 125 102 0.83
2025/26 150 137 108 0.91
2026/27 150 181 117 1.21

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

181

499 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.6%

117 of 181

Offers to families outside the council

35%

52 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

760

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

826

108.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

66

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

100

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 The St Thomas the Apostle College 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 The St Thomas the Apostle College 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The St Thomas the Apostle College 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 2009/10 750 places 698 on roll 2010/11 750 places 685 on roll 2011/12 750 places 697 on roll 2012/13 775 places 672 on roll 2013/14 775 places 618 on roll 2014/15 750 places 609 on roll 2015/16 750 places 676 on roll 2016/17 750 places 769 on roll 2017/18 750 places 828 on roll 2018/19 860 places 938 on roll 2020/21 860 places 1,038 on roll 2021/22 860 places 1,068 on roll 2022/23 860 places 1,082 on roll 2023/24 860 places 1,098 on roll 2024/25 860 places 1,112 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Southwark

Postcode SE15 2EB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 100857).

Other contested secondary schools in Southwark

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.