School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named St Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 233 and 258 put it first.

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

1.11

first choices for every place available

258 first preferences for 233 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield

There is no published appeal success rate for St Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Wigan 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 Wigan, 18.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 99 of 538 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 Wigan.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wigan 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 Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield, 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 1.16 per place 277 first choices 238 places 2016/17 1.12 per place 265 first choices 237 places 2017/18 1.13 per place 267 first choices 236 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 230 first choices 234 places 2019/20 1.17 per place 273 first choices 234 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 259 first choices 234 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 246 first choices 235 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 228 first choices 233 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 229 first choices 231 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 222 first choices 236 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 223 first choices 227 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 258 first choices 233 places
First preferences per place at St Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 258 first preferences for 233 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 238 277 235 1.16
2016/17 237 265 236 1.12
2017/18 236 267 236 1.13
2018/19 234 230 229 0.98
2019/20 234 273 232 1.17
2020/21 234 259 234 1.11
2021/22 235 246 234 1.05
2022/23 233 228 226 0.98
2023/24 231 229 225 0.99
2024/25 236 222 222 0.94
2025/26 227 223 219 0.98
2026/27 233 258 224 1.11

Places offered

233

in 2026/27

Named first choice

258

453 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.8%

224 of 258

Offers to families outside the council

28%

65 of 233 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria St Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield 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 Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield, 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 Looked after children and previously looked after children.
2 Baptised Catholic children resident in the parishes of St Oswald & St Edmund Arrowsmith; St Wilfrid’s, Ashton-in-Makerfield; Our Lady Immaculate, Bryn; The Blessed English Martyrs', Haydock; St Benedict's, Hindley; St John Rigby (the part of the parish formerly referred to as Sacred Heart, Hindley Green); Holy Family, Platt Bridge and St Aidan's, Winstanley, or former parish of Sacred Heart, Hindley Green Catholic School. (see notes 3&10)
3 Other Catholic children. (see note 3) This is for admission to the school at the start of the school year in September and not for applications made in-year 4. Children attending one of the following Catholic Partner Primary Schools in the parishes or former parishes named in criterion 2 above: English Martyr’s, Haydock St Aidan’s Holy Family, Platt Bridge St Benedict’s St Oswald’s Sacred Heart, Hindley Green St Wilfrid’s
4 Members of an Eastern Christian Church not in full communion with Rome . (see notes 4&5)
5 Children of other Christian Ecclesial Communities whose membership is evidenced by a minister of religion. (see note 5)
6 Children of other faiths whose membership is evidenced by a religious leader. (see note 6)
7 Any other children.

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 Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield'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

1,339

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,198

89.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

141

across Years 7 to 11

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 Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield 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 Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield reported 141 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.5% 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 Edmund Arrowsmith Catholic High School, Ashton-in-Makerfield from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,254 places 1,203 on roll 2010/11 1,252 places 1,227 on roll 2011/12 1,252 places 1,232 on roll 2012/13 1,252 places 1,221 on roll 2013/14 1,259 places 1,215 on roll 2014/15 1,259 places 1,220 on roll 2015/16 1,259 places 1,205 on roll 2016/17 1,259 places 1,204 on roll 2017/18 1,259 places 1,201 on roll 2018/19 1,259 places 1,200 on roll 2020/21 1,259 places 1,210 on roll 2021/22 1,259 places 1,213 on roll 2022/23 1,259 places 1,211 on roll 2023/24 1,259 places 1,206 on roll 2024/25 1,339 places 1,198 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
Wigan

Postcode WN4 9PF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 106540).

Other contested secondary schools in Wigan

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.