School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Anselm's College?

In 2026/27, St Anselm's College offered 157 places and 155 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.99

first choices for every place available

155 first preferences for 157 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Anselm's College

There is no published appeal success rate for St Anselm's 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 Wirral 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 Wirral, 26.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 338 of 1,293 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 Wirral.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wirral 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 Anselm's College turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Anselm's 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 1.04 per place 140 first choices 134 places 2016/17 1.18 per place 159 first choices 135 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 121 first choices 125 places 2018/19 1 per place 138 first choices 138 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 138 first choices 139 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 132 first choices 134 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 151 first choices 153 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 141 first choices 140 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 134 first choices 136 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 164 first choices 155 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 162 first choices 156 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 155 first choices 157 places
First preferences per place at St Anselm's College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 155 first preferences for 157 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Anselm's College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 134 140 131 1.04
2016/17 135 159 135 1.18
2017/18 125 121 121 0.97
2018/19 138 138 133 1
2019/20 139 138 138 0.99
2020/21 134 132 132 0.99
2021/22 153 151 150 0.99
2022/23 140 141 137 1.01
2023/24 136 134 134 0.99
2024/25 155 164 154 1.06
2025/26 156 162 156 1.04
2026/27 157 155 155 0.99

Places offered

157

in 2026/27

Named first choice

155

320 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

155 of 155

Offers to families outside the council

8%

12 of 157 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

801

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

789

98.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

12

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

225

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 Anselm's 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 Anselm's College reported 12 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.5% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Anselm's College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,006 places 858 on roll 2012/13 1,006 places 882 on roll 2013/14 986 places 861 on roll 2014/15 936 places 863 on roll 2015/16 936 places 883 on roll 2016/17 936 places 901 on roll 2017/18 936 places 876 on roll 2018/19 1,040 places 913 on roll 2020/21 1,026 places 979 on roll 2021/22 1,026 places 978 on roll 2022/23 1,026 places 995 on roll 2023/24 1,026 places 983 on roll 2024/25 1,026 places 985 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
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wirral

Postcode CH43 1UQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136780).

Other contested secondary schools in Wirral

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.