School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Margaret Ward Catholic Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named St Margaret Ward Catholic Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 209 and 219 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.

1.05

first choices for every place available

219 first preferences for 209 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Margaret Ward Catholic Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Margaret Ward 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 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 Margaret Ward Catholic Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Margaret Ward 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 0.93 per place 181 first choices 195 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 194 first choices 208 places 2017/18 1.04 per place 206 first choices 198 places 2018/19 1.04 per place 215 first choices 207 places 2019/20 0.8 per place 168 first choices 210 places 2020/21 0.86 per place 178 first choices 207 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 196 first choices 209 places 2022/23 0.8 per place 169 first choices 210 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 220 first choices 208 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 195 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 217 first choices 209 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 219 first choices 209 places
First preferences per place at St Margaret Ward Catholic Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 219 first preferences for 209 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Margaret Ward 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
2015/16 195 181 181 0.93
2016/17 208 194 194 0.93
2017/18 198 206 181 1.04
2018/19 207 215 192 1.04
2019/20 210 168 168 0.8
2020/21 207 178 174 0.86
2021/22 209 196 191 0.94
2022/23 210 169 169 0.8
2023/24 208 220 196 1.06
2024/25 204 195 182 0.96
2025/26 209 217 197 1.04
2026/27 209 219 195 1.05

Places offered

209

in 2026/27

Named first choice

219

457 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89%

195 of 219

Offers to families outside the council

6%

12 of 209 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,039

103.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

39

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Margaret Ward 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 Margaret Ward Catholic Academy 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Margaret Ward Catholic Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,200 places 1,087 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,077 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,098 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,120 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,105 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,090 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,126 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,155 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,153 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,169 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,141 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
Stoke-on-Trent

Postcode ST6 6LZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140149).

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.