School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St George's Catholic School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 47 families who named St George's Catholic School as their first choice did not get a place: 166 put it first and 119 of them were offered one.

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

47

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

166 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St George's Catholic School

There is no published appeal success rate for St George's 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 Westminster 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 Westminster, 5.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 8 of 152 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 Westminster.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Westminster 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 George's Catholic School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 6 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 George's 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 0.89 per place 128 first choices 144 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 164 first choices 144 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 173 first choices 148 places 2018/19 1.05 per place 154 first choices 147 places 2019/20 0.84 per place 172 first choices 205 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 169 first choices 178 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 177 first choices 175 places 2022/23 1.03 per place 182 first choices 176 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 133 first choices 176 places 2024/25 0.82 per place 145 first choices 177 places 2025/26 0.76 per place 156 first choices 206 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 166 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at St George's Catholic School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 166 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St George's 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
2015/16 144 128 94 0.89
2016/17 144 164 102 1.14
2017/18 148 173 99 1.17
2018/19 147 154 102 1.05
2019/20 205 172 137 0.84
2020/21 178 169 126 0.95
2021/22 175 177 128 1.01
2022/23 176 182 141 1.03
2023/24 176 133 122 0.76
2024/25 177 145 103 0.82
2025/26 206 156 140 0.76
2026/27 175 166 119 0.95

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

166

617 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.7%

119 of 166

Offers to families outside the council

71%

125 of 175 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

870

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

888

102.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

18

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

220

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 George's 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 George's 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St George's Catholic School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 634 places 646 on roll 2013/14 750 places 683 on roll 2014/15 750 places 855 on roll 2015/16 883 places 880 on roll 2016/17 883 places 924 on roll 2017/18 883 places 937 on roll 2018/19 883 places 979 on roll 2020/21 1,090 places 1,058 on roll 2021/22 1,090 places 1,049 on roll 2022/23 1,090 places 1,106 on roll 2023/24 1,090 places 1,106 on roll 2024/25 1,090 places 1,156 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
Westminster

Postcode W9 1RB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139369).

Other contested secondary schools in Westminster

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.