School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Thomas More RC College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 51 families who named St Thomas More RC College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 149 and 195 put it first.

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

1.31

first choices for every place available

195 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Thomas More RC College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Thomas More RC 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 Thomas More RC 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 Thomas More RC 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 1.45 per place 216 first choices 149 places 2016/17 1.45 per place 220 first choices 152 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 193 first choices 153 places 2018/19 1.46 per place 218 first choices 149 places 2019/20 1.42 per place 212 first choices 149 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 161 first choices 146 places 2021/22 1.2 per place 183 first choices 153 places 2022/23 1.36 per place 206 first choices 152 places 2023/24 1.1 per place 172 first choices 156 places 2024/25 1.37 per place 207 first choices 151 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 170 first choices 153 places 2026/27 1.31 per place 195 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at St Thomas More RC College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 195 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Thomas More RC College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 149 216 147 1.45
2016/17 152 220 150 1.45
2017/18 153 193 146 1.26
2018/19 149 218 146 1.46
2019/20 149 212 147 1.42
2020/21 146 161 140 1.1
2021/22 153 183 146 1.2
2022/23 152 206 149 1.36
2023/24 156 172 145 1.1
2024/25 151 207 148 1.37
2025/26 153 170 144 1.11
2026/27 149 195 144 1.31

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

195

457 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.8%

144 of 195

Offers to families outside the council

23%

34 of 149 offers

How close you had to live

St Thomas More RC College filled its places in 2026, and 291m — 0.18 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 13 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

0.18 mi

291 metres, 2026

Under criterion

13

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.

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

912

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

787

86.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

125

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 Thomas More RC 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 Thomas More RC College reported 125 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.3% 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 Thomas More RC 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 2009/10 668 places 794 on roll 2010/11 787 places 787 on roll 2011/12 750 places 782 on roll 2012/13 750 places 771 on roll 2013/14 750 places 771 on roll 2014/15 750 places 763 on roll 2015/16 750 places 762 on roll 2016/17 750 places 763 on roll 2017/18 750 places 764 on roll 2018/19 750 places 767 on roll 2020/21 750 places 773 on roll 2021/22 800 places 776 on roll 2022/23 800 places 772 on roll 2023/24 800 places 775 on roll 2024/25 912 places 787 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 M34 6AF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 106271).

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.