School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at De La Salle School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named De La Salle School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 228 and 234 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

234 first preferences for 228 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at De La Salle School

There is no published appeal success rate for De La Salle 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 St. Helens 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 St. Helens, 22.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 46 of 203 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 St. Helens.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not St. Helens 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

De La Salle School turned first-choice families away in 1 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 De La Salle 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 0.96 per place 231 first choices 240 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 217 first choices 240 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 203 first choices 214 places 2018/19 0.91 per place 196 first choices 215 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 221 first choices 238 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 221 first choices 234 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 230 first choices 233 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 217 first choices 234 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 229 first choices 232 places 2024/25 0.95 per place 221 first choices 233 places 2025/26 0.9 per place 187 first choices 207 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 234 first choices 228 places
First preferences per place at De La Salle School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 234 first preferences for 228 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at De La Salle School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 240 231 225 0.96
2016/17 240 217 216 0.9
2017/18 214 203 203 0.95
2018/19 215 196 196 0.91
2019/20 238 221 213 0.93
2020/21 234 221 218 0.94
2021/22 233 230 225 0.99
2022/23 234 217 213 0.93
2023/24 232 229 208 0.99
2024/25 233 221 220 0.95
2025/26 207 187 187 0.9
2026/27 228 234 211 1.03

Places offered

228

in 2026/27

Named first choice

234

553 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.2%

211 of 234

Offers to families outside the council

14%

32 of 228 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 104834.

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

1,180

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,180

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 De La Salle 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 De La Salle 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at De La Salle School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,191 places 1,194 on roll 2010/11 1,191 places 1,195 on roll 2011/12 1,191 places 1,194 on roll 2012/13 1,191 places 1,199 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,207 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,189 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,190 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,190 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,160 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,165 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,198 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,185 on roll 2022/23 1,180 places 1,195 on roll 2023/24 1,180 places 1,197 on roll 2024/25 1,180 places 1,180 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
St. Helens

Postcode WA10 4QH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150833).

Other contested secondary schools in St. Helens

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.