School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 176 put it first and 169 of them were offered one.

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

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

176 first preferences for 206 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Wolverhampton 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 Wolverhampton, 10.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 133 of 1,282 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 Wolverhampton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wolverhampton 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

Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 5 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 Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy, 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 0.87 per place 129 first choices 148 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 146 first choices 148 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 156 first choices 170 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 196 first choices 208 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 200 first choices 208 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 196 first choices 209 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 190 first choices 207 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 176 first choices 207 places 2023/24 0.86 per place 177 first choices 205 places 2024/25 0.88 per place 184 first choices 208 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 226 first choices 205 places 2026/27 0.85 per place 176 first choices 206 places
First preferences per place at Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 176 first preferences for 206 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 148 129 126 0.87
2016/17 148 146 125 0.99
2017/18 170 156 153 0.92
2018/19 208 196 182 0.94
2019/20 208 200 176 0.96
2020/21 209 196 171 0.94
2021/22 207 190 171 0.92
2022/23 207 176 170 0.85
2023/24 205 177 163 0.86
2024/25 208 184 164 0.88
2025/26 205 226 173 1.1
2026/27 206 176 169 0.85

Places offered

206

in 2026/27

Named first choice

176

409 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96%

169 of 176

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 206 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 104401.

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

980

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,052

107.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

72

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy 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 Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 946 places 823 on roll 2010/11 946 places 849 on roll 2011/12 946 places 823 on roll 2012/13 946 places 810 on roll 2013/14 958 places 790 on roll 2014/15 958 places 816 on roll 2015/16 958 places 794 on roll 2016/17 958 places 822 on roll 2017/18 958 places 818 on roll 2018/19 980 places 888 on roll 2020/21 1,230 places 1,046 on roll 2021/22 1,230 places 1,093 on roll 2022/23 1,230 places 1,132 on roll 2023/24 1,230 places 1,178 on roll 2024/25 1,230 places 1,190 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
Wolverhampton

Postcode WV10 8BL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141802).

Other contested secondary schools in Wolverhampton

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.