School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Saint Ambrose College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 86 families who named Saint Ambrose College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 149 and 223 put it first.

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

1.50

first choices for every place available

223 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Saint Ambrose College

There is no published appeal success rate for Saint Ambrose 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 Trafford 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 Trafford, 11.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 147 of 1,313 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 Trafford.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Trafford 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

Saint Ambrose 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 Saint Ambrose 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 1.35 per place 199 first choices 147 places 2016/17 1.3 per place 223 first choices 172 places 2017/18 1.42 per place 204 first choices 144 places 2018/19 1.34 per place 246 first choices 184 places 2019/20 1.26 per place 224 first choices 178 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 184 first choices 148 places 2021/22 1.41 per place 206 first choices 146 places 2022/23 1.28 per place 192 first choices 150 places 2023/24 1.46 per place 218 first choices 149 places 2024/25 1.44 per place 253 first choices 176 places 2025/26 1.37 per place 205 first choices 150 places 2026/27 1.5 per place 223 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at Saint Ambrose College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 223 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Saint Ambrose College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 147 199 143 1.35
2016/17 172 223 165 1.3
2017/18 144 204 136 1.42
2018/19 184 246 175 1.34
2019/20 178 224 163 1.26
2020/21 148 184 142 1.24
2021/22 146 206 94 1.41
2022/23 150 192 143 1.28
2023/24 149 218 145 1.46
2024/25 176 253 169 1.44
2025/26 150 205 140 1.37
2026/27 149 223 137 1.5

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

223

458 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.4%

137 of 223

Offers to families outside the council

52%

77 of 149 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Saint Ambrose 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 Saint Ambrose 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 Baptised Catholic boys who are designated ‘looked after children’ or ‘previously looked after children’.
2 Baptised Catholic boys who have a brother attending the school at the time of admission.
3 Baptised Catholic Boys whose home address postcode falls within a nominated Local Pastoral Area. Details are provided on the list of Nominated Local Pastoral Areas.
4 Other Baptised Catholic boys.
5 Other Boys who are designated ‘looked after children’ or ‘previously looked after children’.
6 Catechumens and members of an Eastern Christian Church.
7 Baptised Christian boys who have a brother attending the school.
8 Christian boys practising in other Christian denominations supported by a minister’s reference confirming that they are a full and active member of the Church 1.
9 Other boys who have a brother attending the school at the time of admission.
10 Other boys. 1 "Full and active" means a regular churchgoer who attends more than once a month, is known to the parish priest / minister and is involved in church activities. Hale Barns, Altrincham, WA15 0HE. In the event of over-subscription within any one of the categories, priority will be given to those boys who are in receipt of Pupil Premium followed by boys who live closest to the School. The distance from home to St Ambrose College will be calculated in a direct straight line from the child’s permanent place of residence using co-ordinates held in Trafford’s Local Land and Property Gazetteer (BS7666) and are available, on request, from Trafford’s School Admissions Team. […] criterion continues in the source document
11 Saint Ambrose Barlow Deanery (Diocese of Salford) The following Local Pastoral Areas include the following postcodes: All M16, M21, M32 and M41 postcodes. Our Lady’s & St. Alphonsus Moss Side/Old Trafford St. Ann’s & St. Hugh of Lincoln Stretford Our Lady and the English Martyrs’ Davyhulme/Urmston St. Monica’s Flixton St. John’s and St Teresa’s Firswood / Chorlton

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.

Saint Ambrose 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

809

107.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

59

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 Saint Ambrose 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 Saint Ambrose 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Saint Ambrose College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 826 places 941 on roll 2012/13 901 places 944 on roll 2013/14 946 places 963 on roll 2014/15 946 places 946 on roll 2015/16 946 places 952 on roll 2016/17 946 places 987 on roll 2017/18 946 places 1,004 on roll 2018/19 946 places 1,011 on roll 2020/21 1,023 places 1,055 on roll 2021/22 937 places 1,072 on roll 2022/23 983 places 1,082 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,068 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,090 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. Saint Ambrose College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Saint Ambrose College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
7 December 2016 Arrangements did not comply ADA3249

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
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Trafford

Postcode WA15 0HE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138134).

Other contested secondary schools in Trafford

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.