School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Gregory's Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 83 families who named St Gregory's Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 240 and 314 put it first.

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

1.31

first choices for every place available

314 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Gregory's Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Gregory's Catholic High School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Warrington 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 Warrington, 28.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 88 of 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 Warrington.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Warrington 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 Gregory's Catholic High School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at St Gregory's Catholic High School, 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 0.88 per place 169 first choices 192 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 159 first choices 180 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 166 first choices 192 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 201 first choices 238 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 293 first choices 238 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 247 first choices 240 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 259 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 275 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.39 per place 333 first choices 239 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 279 first choices 240 places 2025/26 1.16 per place 277 first choices 238 places 2026/27 1.31 per place 314 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at St Gregory's Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 314 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Gregory's Catholic High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 192 169 168 0.88
2016/17 180 159 158 0.88
2017/18 192 166 166 0.86
2018/19 238 201 201 0.84
2019/20 238 293 233 1.23
2020/21 240 247 228 1.03
2021/22 240 259 230 1.08
2022/23 240 275 229 1.15
2023/24 239 333 227 1.39
2024/25 240 279 233 1.16
2025/26 238 277 233 1.16
2026/27 240 314 231 1.31

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

314

646 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.6%

231 of 314

Offers to families outside the council

4%

10 of 240 offers

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

1,115

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,206

108.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

91

reported as full or beyond

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 Gregory's Catholic High School 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 Gregory's Catholic High School 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 Gregory's Catholic High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 960 places 963 on roll 2010/11 960 places 972 on roll 2011/12 960 places 975 on roll 2012/13 960 places 973 on roll 2013/14 960 places 959 on roll 2014/15 960 places 909 on roll 2015/16 960 places 912 on roll 2016/17 976 places 898 on roll 2017/18 978 places 920 on roll 2018/19 1,141 places 990 on roll 2020/21 1,141 places 1,098 on roll 2021/22 1,114 places 1,163 on roll 2022/23 1,114 places 1,208 on roll 2023/24 1,116 places 1,211 on roll 2024/25 1,115 places 1,206 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
Warrington

Postcode WA5 1HG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 111454).

Other contested secondary schools in Warrington

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.