School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Painsley Catholic College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Painsley Catholic College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 246 and 248 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

248 first preferences for 246 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Painsley Catholic College

There is no published appeal success rate for Painsley Catholic 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 Staffordshire 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 Staffordshire, 20.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 157 of 752 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 Staffordshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Staffordshire 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

Painsley Catholic College turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Painsley Catholic 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 1.25 per place 260 first choices 208 places 2016/17 1.16 per place 254 first choices 219 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 243 first choices 219 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 266 first choices 227 places 2019/20 1.24 per place 276 first choices 223 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 254 first choices 224 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 256 first choices 226 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 227 first choices 222 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 218 first choices 224 places 2024/25 1 per place 220 first choices 221 places 2025/26 1 per place 216 first choices 215 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 248 first choices 246 places
First preferences per place at Painsley Catholic College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 248 first preferences for 246 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Painsley Catholic College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 208 260 204 1.25
2016/17 219 254 214 1.16
2017/18 219 243 209 1.11
2018/19 227 266 222 1.17
2019/20 223 276 210 1.24
2020/21 224 254 220 1.13
2021/22 226 256 226 1.13
2022/23 222 227 221 1.02
2023/24 224 218 213 0.97
2024/25 221 220 214 1
2025/26 215 216 208 1
2026/27 246 248 245 1.01

Places offered

246

in 2026/27

Named first choice

248

375 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.8%

245 of 248

Offers to families outside the council

17%

41 of 246 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

1,069

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,114

104.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

45

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

451

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 Painsley Catholic 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 Painsley Catholic 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Painsley Catholic College from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 925 places 1,121 on roll 2013/14 925 places 1,144 on roll 2014/15 925 places 1,186 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,190 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,213 on roll 2017/18 1,447 places 1,261 on roll 2018/19 1,431 places 1,313 on roll 2020/21 1,458 places 1,359 on roll 2021/22 1,467 places 1,339 on roll 2022/23 1,467 places 1,310 on roll 2023/24 1,467 places 1,320 on roll 2024/25 1,520 places 1,315 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
Staffordshire

Postcode ST10 1LH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138729).

Other contested secondary schools in Staffordshire

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.