School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Oscar Romero Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 120 families who named St Oscar Romero Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 172 and 289 put it first.

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

1.68

first choices for every place available

289 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Oscar Romero Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Oscar Romero Catholic 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 West Sussex 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 West Sussex, 19.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 239 of 1,199 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 West Sussex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not West Sussex 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 Oscar Romero Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Oscar Romero Catholic 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 96 first choices 109 places 2016/17 0.83 per place 92 first choices 111 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 141 first choices 124 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 129 first choices 135 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 194 first choices 147 places 2020/21 1.09 per place 196 first choices 179 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 201 first choices 176 places 2022/23 1.42 per place 255 first choices 180 places 2023/24 1.6 per place 289 first choices 181 places 2024/25 1.73 per place 306 first choices 177 places 2025/26 1.34 per place 239 first choices 178 places 2026/27 1.68 per place 289 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at St Oscar Romero Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 289 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Oscar Romero Catholic School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 109 96 96 0.88
2016/17 111 92 92 0.83
2017/18 124 141 113 1.14
2018/19 135 129 118 0.96
2019/20 147 194 119 1.32
2020/21 179 196 159 1.09
2021/22 176 201 154 1.14
2022/23 180 255 170 1.42
2023/24 181 289 179 1.6
2024/25 177 306 176 1.73
2025/26 178 239 175 1.34
2026/27 172 289 169 1.68

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

289

681 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

58.5%

169 of 289

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 172 offers

How close you had to live

St Oscar Romero Catholic School filled its places in 2026, and 6,388m — 3.97 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 8 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

3.97 mi

6,388 metres, 2026

Under criterion

8

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.

West Sussex 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 Oscar Romero Catholic School 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 Oscar Romero Catholic School, 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 Other looked after children or previously looked after children (see note b.).
2 Catechumens, Candidates for Reception into the Church and children who are members of an Orthodox Church (see note d. & e.). If application is being made for a place at the school where the parent/carer is a Catechumen or Candidate for reception into the Church, evidence of their being a member of the Catechumenate of a Catholic Church or a Candidate for reception will be required. Proof of acceptance into the catechumenate, and evidence for a candidate, should be by letter from the appropriate priest. […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Other children with a brother or sister (see note f.) at the school at the time of admission.
4 Other children who are considered to have an exceptional or compelling need, supported by written evidence (see note n.).
5 Children of Staff in either or both of the following circumstances:
a) A permanent member of staff that has been employed at the school for at least two years at the time of application (see note o.).
b) A member of staff recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage (see note o.)
6 Other children currently attending one of the named feeder schools (see note k.).
7 Children of other Christian denominations (see note l.) whose membership is evidenced by a minister of religion. The application must be supported by either a certificate of baptism or a letter confirming membership of the Christian denomination, signed by the minister of religion
8 Children of other faiths (see note m.) whose membership is evidenced by a religious leader. The application must be supported by a letter confirming membership of that faith, signed by the faith leader.
9 Any other children. Final Tiebreaker: Priority will be given to children living closest to the school determined by the shortest distance (see note j.). ___________________________________________________________________________________ Application Procedure To apply for a place at this school in the normal admissions round, you should complete and return the following two forms:
10 The COMMON APPLICATION FORM (CAF) All applications for places must be made on the Common Application Form which is available either from the Local Authority (where the parent lives) or through that Local Authority’s website. For a valid application, the completed CAF must be returned either online or in the paper form by 31 October 2025.
11 The school’s SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION FORM (SIF) This is available from the school and the school website and allows the Governors to put all applicants in order of priority for admission in line with the published admission policy. If you are expressing a preference for a place for your child at this school and wish to apply in connection with one of the faith criteria, you need to complete the SIF. If you do not complete the SIF and return it to the school with all supporting documents by the closing date, your child may not be placed in the appropriate faith criterion. This is likely to affect your child’s chance of being offered a place. […] criterion continues in the source document

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 Oscar Romero Catholic School'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

736

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

992

134.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

256

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Oscar Romero Catholic 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 Oscar Romero Catholic 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 Oscar Romero Catholic School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 620 places 616 on roll 2010/11 620 places 624 on roll 2011/12 620 places 630 on roll 2012/13 740 places 628 on roll 2013/14 663 places 623 on roll 2014/15 663 places 613 on roll 2015/16 663 places 607 on roll 2016/17 663 places 619 on roll 2017/18 663 places 630 on roll 2018/19 663 places 673 on roll 2020/21 723 places 796 on roll 2021/22 822 places 869 on roll 2022/23 822 places 922 on roll 2023/24 822 places 981 on roll 2024/25 936 places 1,068 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. St Oscar Romero Catholic School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Oscar Romero Catholic School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
23 January 2024 No fault found VAR2386

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
Voluntary aided school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
West Sussex

Postcode BN12 5AF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 126096).

Other contested secondary schools in West Sussex

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.