School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Paul's Catholic College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 78 families who named St Paul's Catholic College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 210 and 267 put it first.

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

1.27

first choices for every place available

267 first preferences for 210 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Paul's Catholic College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Paul's 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 Surrey 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 Surrey, 21.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 215 of 1,016 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 Surrey.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Surrey 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 Paul's Catholic College turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 3 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 Paul's 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 0.72 per place 128 first choices 179 places 2016/17 0.66 per place 118 first choices 178 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 177 first choices 180 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 180 first choices 190 places 2019/20 1.46 per place 273 first choices 187 places 2020/21 1.36 per place 282 first choices 207 places 2021/22 1.17 per place 249 first choices 212 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 225 first choices 223 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 276 first choices 228 places 2024/25 1.22 per place 271 first choices 222 places 2025/26 1.33 per place 280 first choices 210 places 2026/27 1.27 per place 267 first choices 210 places
First preferences per place at St Paul's Catholic College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 267 first preferences for 210 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Paul's 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
2015/16 179 128 98 0.72
2016/17 178 118 113 0.66
2017/18 180 177 113 0.98
2018/19 190 180 144 0.95
2019/20 187 273 149 1.46
2020/21 207 282 164 1.36
2021/22 212 249 164 1.17
2022/23 223 225 167 1.01
2023/24 228 276 201 1.21
2024/25 222 271 186 1.22
2025/26 210 280 190 1.33
2026/27 210 267 189 1.27

Places offered

210

in 2026/27

Named first choice

267

794 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.8%

189 of 267

Offers to families outside the council

43%

90 of 210 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 125311.

How close you had to live

St Paul's Catholic College filled its places in 2024, and 6,278m — 3.90 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 5 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

3.90 mi

6,278 metres, 2024

Under criterion

5

as numbered by the school

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Surrey Council, allocation statistics for 2024. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria St Paul's Catholic College published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for St Paul's Catholic College, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Catholic looked after and previously looked after children. (see notes 2 & 3)
2 Catholic children with a Certificate of Catholic Practice who are resident in the parishes of St Lawrence’s Catholic Church Feltham, St Ignatius, Sunbury; St Michael’s, Ashford; Our Lady of the Rosary, Staines; St Francis De Sales, Hampton Hill; St Theodore’s of Canterbury, Hampton; St John Fisher, Shepperton; St Margaret of Scotland, St Margarets; The Sacred Heart. Teddington; St James’s, Twickenham; St Edmund of Canterbury, Whitton; St David’s Stanwell. (see notes 3, 4 & 12)
3 Other Catholic children with a Certificate of Catholic Practice. (see notes 3 & 4)
4 Other Catholic children. (see note 3)
5 Other looked after and previously looked after children. (see note 2)
6 Catechumens and members of an Eastern Christian Church. (see notes 5 & 6)
7 Children of Other Christian Denominations with a certificate of baptism, or where a minister or faith leader verifies by letter that the child is a member of the faith community. (see note 10)
8 Children of other Faiths where a faith leader verifies by letter that the child is a member of the faith community. (See note 11)
9 Any other children. Within each of the categories listed above, the following provisions will be applied in the following order.
(i) Where children have a parent who is a member of staff at St Paul’s Catholic College, and has been employed by Ascension Catholic Accademy Trust, for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school (see note 8). (ii) Where evidence is provided at the time of application of an exceptional social, medical or pastoral need of the child which can most appropriately be met at this school, will increase the priority of an application within each category so that the application will be placed at the top of the category in which the application is made after children in (i) above (see note 9) (iii) The attendance of a brother or sister at the school at the time of […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

St Paul's Catholic College's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,096

104.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

46

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Paul's 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 St Paul's 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Paul's Catholic College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,067 places 1,072 on roll 2010/11 1,067 places 1,098 on roll 2011/12 1,100 places 1,088 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 1,109 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 1,070 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 1,048 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 1,038 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 1,043 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 1,099 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 1,162 on roll 2020/21 1,160 places 1,237 on roll 2021/22 1,280 places 1,283 on roll 2022/23 1,294 places 1,304 on roll 2023/24 1,303 places 1,328 on roll 2024/25 1,350 places 1,364 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 Paul's Catholic College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Paul's Catholic College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
2 November 2016 Arrangements did not comply ADA3141

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
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Surrey

Postcode TW16 6JE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149290).

Other contested secondary schools in Surrey

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.