School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Thomas More Catholic Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named St Thomas More Catholic Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 197 and 197 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

first choices for every place available

197 first preferences for 197 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Thomas More Catholic Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Thomas More 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 Thomas More Catholic Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at St Thomas More 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 0.97 per place 178 first choices 184 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 189 first choices 187 places 2017/18 0.89 per place 178 first choices 199 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 176 first choices 207 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 178 first choices 197 places 2020/21 0.82 per place 159 first choices 195 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 179 first choices 196 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 178 first choices 195 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 172 first choices 196 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 209 first choices 198 places 2025/26 0.82 per place 162 first choices 198 places 2026/27 1 per place 197 first choices 197 places
First preferences per place at St Thomas More Catholic Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 197 first preferences for 197 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Thomas More 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
2015/16 184 178 161 0.97
2016/17 187 189 156 1.01
2017/18 199 178 172 0.89
2018/19 207 176 172 0.85
2019/20 197 178 157 0.9
2020/21 195 159 155 0.82
2021/22 196 179 179 0.91
2022/23 195 178 165 0.91
2023/24 196 172 172 0.88
2024/25 198 209 179 1.06
2025/26 198 162 156 0.82
2026/27 197 197 178 1

Places offered

197

in 2026/27

Named first choice

197

436 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.4%

178 of 197

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 197 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

935

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

999

106.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

64

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 Thomas More 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 Thomas More 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 Thomas More 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 1,135 places 1,053 on roll 2014/15 1,135 places 1,012 on roll 2015/16 1,135 places 1,031 on roll 2016/17 1,135 places 1,015 on roll 2017/18 1,135 places 1,006 on roll 2018/19 1,135 places 1,036 on roll 2020/21 1,135 places 1,115 on roll 2021/22 1,135 places 1,139 on roll 2022/23 1,135 places 1,144 on roll 2023/24 1,135 places 1,171 on roll 2024/25 1,135 places 1,103 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 ST3 2NJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140304).

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.