School Admission Appeals

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

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named St Peter's Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 199 and 238 put it first.

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

1.20

first choices for every place available

238 first preferences for 199 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Peter's Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Peter'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 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 Peter's Catholic High 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 Peter'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 1.15 per place 205 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1.06 per place 211 first choices 199 places 2017/18 1.03 per place 212 first choices 205 places 2018/19 1.1 per place 219 first choices 199 places 2019/20 1.24 per place 250 first choices 201 places 2020/21 1.16 per place 235 first choices 202 places 2021/22 1.09 per place 215 first choices 197 places 2022/23 1.13 per place 221 first choices 196 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 213 first choices 199 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 219 first choices 202 places 2025/26 1.34 per place 255 first choices 191 places 2026/27 1.2 per place 238 first choices 199 places
First preferences per place at St Peter's Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 238 first preferences for 199 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Peter'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
2015/16 178 205 177 1.15
2016/17 199 211 196 1.06
2017/18 205 212 203 1.03
2018/19 199 219 197 1.1
2019/20 201 250 200 1.24
2020/21 202 235 202 1.16
2021/22 197 215 194 1.09
2022/23 196 221 194 1.13
2023/24 199 213 194 1.07
2024/25 202 219 198 1.08
2025/26 191 255 189 1.34
2026/27 199 238 198 1.2

Places offered

199

in 2026/27

Named first choice

238

478 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.2%

198 of 238

Offers to families outside the council

20%

39 of 199 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

1,071

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,031

96.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

40

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 Peter'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 Peter's Catholic High School reported 40 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.3% 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 Peter's Catholic High 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 2009/10 894 places 935 on roll 2010/11 890 places 932 on roll 2011/12 900 places 923 on roll 2012/13 900 places 929 on roll 2013/14 900 places 930 on roll 2014/15 900 places 921 on roll 2015/16 997 places 930 on roll 2016/17 997 places 953 on roll 2017/18 1,071 places 961 on roll 2018/19 1,071 places 979 on roll 2020/21 1,071 places 1,039 on roll 2021/22 1,071 places 1,039 on roll 2022/23 1,071 places 1,036 on roll 2023/24 1,071 places 1,047 on roll 2024/25 1,071 places 1,031 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 Peter's Catholic High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Peter's Catholic High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 August 2020 Arrangements did not comply ADA3712

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
Wigan

Postcode WN5 8NU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 106537).

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.