School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Joseph's College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 144 families who named St Joseph's College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 150 and 285 put it first.

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

1.90

first choices for every place available

285 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Joseph's College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Joseph's 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 Stoke-on-Trent 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 Stoke-on-Trent, 21% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 98 of 466 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 Stoke-on-Trent.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Stoke-on-Trent 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 Joseph's College turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at St Joseph's College, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.77 per place 263 first choices 149 places 2016/17 1.77 per place 266 first choices 150 places 2017/18 1.77 per place 263 first choices 149 places 2018/19 1.7 per place 255 first choices 150 places 2019/20 1.83 per place 275 first choices 150 places 2020/21 1.95 per place 290 first choices 149 places 2021/22 1.54 per place 230 first choices 149 places 2022/23 1.85 per place 277 first choices 150 places 2023/24 1.84 per place 274 first choices 149 places 2024/25 2.21 per place 325 first choices 147 places 2025/26 1.81 per place 270 first choices 149 places 2026/27 1.9 per place 285 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at St Joseph's College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 285 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Joseph's College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 149 263 148 1.77
2016/17 150 266 147 1.77
2017/18 149 263 149 1.77
2018/19 150 255 146 1.7
2019/20 150 275 147 1.83
2020/21 149 290 148 1.95
2021/22 149 230 145 1.54
2022/23 150 277 150 1.85
2023/24 149 274 144 1.84
2024/25 147 325 142 2.21
2025/26 149 270 144 1.81
2026/27 150 285 141 1.9

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

285

438 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

49.5%

141 of 285

Offers to families outside the council

42%

63 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

715

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

756

105.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

41

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 Joseph's 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 St Joseph's 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Joseph's College from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,115 places 1,050 on roll 2011/12 1,115 places 1,061 on roll 2012/13 1,115 places 1,055 on roll 2013/14 1,115 places 1,070 on roll 2014/15 1,060 places 1,090 on roll 2015/16 1,060 places 1,113 on roll 2016/17 1,060 places 1,085 on roll 2017/18 1,060 places 1,113 on roll 2018/19 1,175 places 1,163 on roll 2020/21 1,175 places 1,130 on roll 2021/22 1,115 places 1,171 on roll 2022/23 1,115 places 1,154 on roll 2023/24 1,115 places 1,145 on roll 2024/25 1,115 places 1,132 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. St Joseph's College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Joseph's College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
24 September 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2880

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Stoke-on-Trent

Postcode ST4 5NT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136460).

Other contested secondary schools in Stoke-on-Trent

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.