School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Augustine's Catholic College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named St Augustine's Catholic College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 170 and 178 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

178 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Augustine's Catholic College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Augustine's Catholic College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Wiltshire 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 Wiltshire, 24.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 228 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 Wiltshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wiltshire 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 Augustine's Catholic College 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 Augustine's Catholic College, 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 1.08 per place 160 first choices 148 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 170 first choices 155 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 175 first choices 154 places 2018/19 1.26 per place 196 first choices 156 places 2019/20 1.25 per place 188 first choices 150 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 195 first choices 152 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 153 first choices 156 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 172 first choices 175 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 136 first choices 139 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 141 first choices 143 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 146 first choices 151 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 178 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at St Augustine's Catholic College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 178 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Augustine's Catholic College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 148 160 147 1.08
2016/17 155 170 153 1.1
2017/18 154 175 152 1.14
2018/19 156 196 156 1.26
2019/20 150 188 147 1.25
2020/21 152 195 149 1.28
2021/22 156 153 148 0.98
2022/23 175 172 168 0.98
2023/24 139 136 136 0.98
2024/25 143 141 141 0.99
2025/26 151 146 146 0.97
2026/27 170 178 167 1.05

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

178

278 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.8%

167 of 178

Offers to families outside the council

10%

17 of 170 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

1,023

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

791

77.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

232

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

203

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 Augustine's Catholic College 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 Augustine's Catholic College reported 232 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 77.3% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Augustine's Catholic College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,042 places 986 on roll 2012/13 1,042 places 963 on roll 2013/14 1,042 places 956 on roll 2014/15 1,042 places 943 on roll 2015/16 1,042 places 947 on roll 2016/17 1,051 places 937 on roll 2017/18 1,051 places 951 on roll 2018/19 1,051 places 976 on roll 2020/21 1,051 places 984 on roll 2021/22 1,051 places 944 on roll 2022/23 1,051 places 942 on roll 2023/24 1,081 places 964 on roll 2024/25 1,226 places 947 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 Augustine's Catholic College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming St Augustine's Catholic College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 August 2019 Arrangements did not comply ADA3611

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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wiltshire

Postcode BA14 9EN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137375).

Other contested secondary schools in Wiltshire

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.