School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Philip Howard Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 62 families who named St Philip Howard Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 203 and 257 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.

1.27

first choices for every place available

257 first preferences for 203 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Philip Howard Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Philip Howard 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 Philip Howard Catholic School 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 Philip Howard 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 1.25 per place 184 first choices 147 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 168 first choices 147 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 207 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.33 per place 235 first choices 177 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 209 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.36 per place 268 first choices 197 places 2021/22 1.42 per place 251 first choices 177 places 2022/23 1.54 per place 278 first choices 180 places 2023/24 1.48 per place 258 first choices 174 places 2024/25 1.4 per place 254 first choices 181 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 244 first choices 206 places 2026/27 1.27 per place 257 first choices 203 places
First preferences per place at St Philip Howard Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 257 first preferences for 203 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Philip Howard 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
2015/16 147 184 143 1.25
2016/17 147 168 146 1.14
2017/18 179 207 177 1.16
2018/19 177 235 175 1.33
2019/20 180 209 166 1.16
2020/21 197 268 192 1.36
2021/22 177 251 172 1.42
2022/23 180 278 180 1.54
2023/24 174 258 166 1.48
2024/25 181 254 177 1.4
2025/26 206 244 190 1.18
2026/27 203 257 195 1.27

Places offered

203

in 2026/27

Named first choice

257

593 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.9%

195 of 257

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 203 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 126102.

How close you had to live

St Philip Howard Catholic School filled its places in 2026, and 5,446m — 3.38 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 12 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

3.38 mi

5,446 metres, 2026

Under criterion

12

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.

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

1,027

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,008

98.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

19

across Years 7 to 11

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 Philip Howard 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 Philip Howard Catholic School reported 19 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.1% 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 Philip Howard Catholic 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 2009/10 902 places 874 on roll 2010/11 902 places 906 on roll 2011/12 902 places 899 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 886 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 916 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 934 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 949 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 973 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 994 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,034 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,129 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,147 on roll 2022/23 1,132 places 1,179 on roll 2023/24 1,227 places 1,242 on roll 2024/25 1,227 places 1,298 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
West Sussex

Postcode PO22 0EN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144243).

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.