School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Francis of Assisi Catholic College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 72 families who named St Francis of Assisi Catholic College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 188 and 235 put it first.

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

1.25

first choices for every place available

235 first preferences for 188 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Francis of Assisi Catholic College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Francis of Assisi 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 Walsall 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 Walsall, 17.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 182 of 1,059 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 Walsall.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Walsall 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 Francis of Assisi Catholic College turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 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 Francis of Assisi 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 1.14 per place 198 first choices 174 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 166 first choices 178 places 2017/18 1.06 per place 189 first choices 179 places 2018/19 0.82 per place 147 first choices 180 places 2019/20 0.87 per place 153 first choices 176 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 164 first choices 186 places 2021/22 0.78 per place 137 first choices 176 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 181 first choices 184 places 2023/24 1 per place 191 first choices 191 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 208 first choices 191 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 214 first choices 174 places 2026/27 1.25 per place 235 first choices 188 places
First preferences per place at St Francis of Assisi Catholic College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 235 first preferences for 188 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Francis of Assisi 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
2015/16 174 198 161 1.14
2016/17 178 166 151 0.93
2017/18 179 189 156 1.06
2018/19 180 147 140 0.82
2019/20 176 153 137 0.87
2020/21 186 164 156 0.88
2021/22 176 137 129 0.78
2022/23 184 181 154 0.98
2023/24 191 191 157 1
2024/25 191 208 163 1.09
2025/26 174 214 155 1.23
2026/27 188 235 163 1.25

Places offered

188

in 2026/27

Named first choice

235

712 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

69.4%

163 of 235

Offers to families outside the council

22%

41 of 188 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria St Francis of Assisi 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 Francis of Assisi 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 Baptised Catholic children (see Note 2 above) who are looked after or previously looked after (see Note 3 above)
2 Other Baptised Catholic children (see Note 2 above) 3. Non-Catholic children who are looked after or previously looked after (see Note 3 above)
3 Other Non-Catholic children. APPENDIX

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 Francis of Assisi 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

1,008

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

926

91.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

82

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

189

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 Francis of Assisi 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 Francis of Assisi Catholic College reported 82 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.9% 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 Francis of Assisi Catholic College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 999 places 1,089 on roll 2010/11 999 places 1,108 on roll 2011/12 1,080 places 1,109 on roll 2012/13 1,080 places 1,092 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,089 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,071 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 1,086 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 1,076 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 1,051 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 1,072 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,130 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,131 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,157 on roll 2023/24 1,197 places 1,149 on roll 2024/25 1,197 places 1,114 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
Walsall

Postcode WS9 0RN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 104255).

Other contested secondary schools in Walsall

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.