School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Damian's RC Science College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 45 families who named St Damian's RC Science College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 159 and 192 put it first.

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

1.21

first choices for every place available

192 first preferences for 159 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Damian's RC Science College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Damian's RC Science 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 Tameside 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 Tameside, 12.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 82 of 635 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 Tameside.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Tameside 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 Damian's RC Science 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 Damian's RC Science 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 1.58 per place 237 first choices 150 places 2016/17 1.62 per place 243 first choices 150 places 2017/18 1.46 per place 239 first choices 164 places 2018/19 1.48 per place 244 first choices 165 places 2019/20 1.41 per place 227 first choices 161 places 2020/21 1.61 per place 262 first choices 163 places 2021/22 1.51 per place 237 first choices 157 places 2022/23 1.28 per place 209 first choices 163 places 2023/24 1.5 per place 240 first choices 160 places 2024/25 1.37 per place 221 first choices 161 places 2025/26 1.32 per place 208 first choices 157 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 192 first choices 159 places
First preferences per place at St Damian's RC Science College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 192 first preferences for 159 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Damian's RC Science College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 150 237 142 1.58
2016/17 150 243 146 1.62
2017/18 164 239 149 1.46
2018/19 165 244 155 1.48
2019/20 161 227 150 1.41
2020/21 163 262 155 1.61
2021/22 157 237 148 1.51
2022/23 163 209 155 1.28
2023/24 160 240 149 1.5
2024/25 161 221 156 1.37
2025/26 157 208 145 1.32
2026/27 159 192 147 1.21

Places offered

159

in 2026/27

Named first choice

192

535 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.6%

147 of 192

Offers to families outside the council

30%

48 of 159 offers

How close you had to live

St Damian's RC Science College filled its places in 2026, and 7,463m — 4.64 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

4.64 mi

7,463 metres, 2026

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.

Tameside Council, allocation statistics for 2026. 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 Damian's RC Science College published for 2026 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 Damian's RC Science College, 2026 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 Baptised Catholic children who are looked after, or Baptised Catholic children who were previously looked after (children who were looked after but ceased to be so because they were adopted or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order) including those children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted (IAPLAC).
2 Baptised Catholic children from the following Catholic partner primary schools:-
• St Christopher’s RC Primary School, Ashton
• Our Lady of Mount Carmel RC Primary School, Ashton
• St Stephen’s RC Primary School, Droylsden
• St Joseph’s RC Primary School, Mossley
3 Baptised Catholic children who will have a brother or sister attending the school at the time of admission.
4 Baptised Catholic children living in the contributory parishes of:-
• St Joseph’s, Mossley
• St Stephen’s, Droylsden
• The Parish of Holy Cross and St Helens (formerly St Mary of the Angels & St Christopher’s) Maps showing Parish boundaries can be consulted in the appropriate parish. 5. Other Baptised Catholic children.
5 Other children who are looked after, or children who were previously looked after (children who were looked after but ceased to be so because they were adopted or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order) including those children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted (IAPLAC).
6 Other children who will have a brother or sister attending the school at the time of admission.
7 Other children.

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 2026 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 Damian's RC Science College's determined admission arrangements for 2026 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

910

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

825

90.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

85

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 Damian's RC Science 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 Damian's RC Science College reported 85 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.7% 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 Damian's RC Science College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 600 places 789 on roll 2010/11 750 places 786 on roll 2011/12 750 places 772 on roll 2012/13 750 places 768 on roll 2013/14 750 places 769 on roll 2014/15 750 places 782 on roll 2015/16 750 places 787 on roll 2016/17 800 places 799 on roll 2017/18 831 places 802 on roll 2018/19 831 places 819 on roll 2020/21 831 places 830 on roll 2021/22 831 places 829 on roll 2022/23 831 places 838 on roll 2023/24 831 places 832 on roll 2024/25 910 places 825 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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Tameside

Postcode OL6 8BH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 106270).

Other contested secondary schools in Tameside

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.