School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy?

In 2026/27, St Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy offered 109 places and 99 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.91

first choices for every place available

99 first preferences for 109 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Stockton-on-Tees 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 Stockton-on-Tees, 30.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 44 of 144 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 Stockton-on-Tees.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Stockton-on-Tees 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 Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy, 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 0.84 per place 85 first choices 101 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 79 first choices 90 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 95 first choices 106 places 2018/19 0.91 per place 80 first choices 88 places 2019/20 0.8 per place 64 first choices 80 places 2020/21 0.64 per place 49 first choices 76 places 2021/22 0.76 per place 72 first choices 95 places 2022/23 0.86 per place 95 first choices 110 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 123 first choices 118 places 2024/25 0.92 per place 101 first choices 110 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 117 first choices 116 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 99 first choices 109 places
First preferences per place at St Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 99 first preferences for 109 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 101 85 85 0.84
2016/17 90 79 79 0.88
2017/18 106 95 95 0.9
2018/19 88 80 80 0.91
2019/20 80 64 64 0.8
2020/21 76 49 49 0.64
2021/22 95 72 72 0.76
2022/23 110 95 95 0.86
2023/24 118 123 116 1.04
2024/25 110 101 101 0.92
2025/26 116 117 113 1.01
2026/27 109 99 99 0.91

Places offered

109

in 2026/27

Named first choice

99

185 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

99 of 99

Offers to families outside the council

7%

8 of 108 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 111759.

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

555

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

540

97.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

15

across Years 7 to 11

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 St Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy 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 Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy reported 15 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.3% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Patrick's Catholic College, A Voluntary Catholic Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 556 places 563 on roll 2010/11 556 places 559 on roll 2011/12 556 places 558 on roll 2012/13 556 places 538 on roll 2013/14 556 places 513 on roll 2014/15 556 places 525 on roll 2015/16 555 places 506 on roll 2016/17 555 places 503 on roll 2017/18 555 places 516 on roll 2018/19 555 places 499 on roll 2020/21 555 places 470 on roll 2021/22 555 places 491 on roll 2022/23 555 places 515 on roll 2023/24 555 places 540 on roll 2024/25 555 places 540 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
Stockton-on-Tees

Postcode TS17 9DE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142281).

Other contested secondary schools in Stockton-on-Tees

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.