School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Edmund's Catholic Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 53 families who named St Edmund's Catholic Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 192 and 209 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

209 first preferences for 192 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Edmund's Catholic Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Edmund's 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

St Edmund's Catholic Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 9 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 St Edmund's 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 131 first choices 150 places 2016/17 1 per place 148 first choices 148 places 2017/18 0.79 per place 116 first choices 147 places 2018/19 0.77 per place 151 first choices 195 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 192 first choices 195 places 2020/21 1.07 per place 160 first choices 149 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 156 first choices 195 places 2022/23 0.77 per place 154 first choices 199 places 2023/24 0.87 per place 171 first choices 197 places 2024/25 0.88 per place 174 first choices 198 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 187 first choices 189 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 209 first choices 192 places
First preferences per place at St Edmund's Catholic Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 209 first preferences for 192 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Edmund's 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
2015/16 150 131 105 0.87
2016/17 148 148 109 1
2017/18 147 116 97 0.79
2018/19 195 151 120 0.77
2019/20 195 192 144 0.98
2020/21 149 160 117 1.07
2021/22 195 156 140 0.8
2022/23 199 154 140 0.77
2023/24 197 171 148 0.87
2024/25 198 174 142 0.88
2025/26 189 187 144 0.99
2026/27 192 209 156 1.09

Places offered

192

in 2026/27

Named first choice

209

603 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.6%

156 of 209

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 192 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

951

95.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

49

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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's 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 St Edmund's Catholic Academy reported 49 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.1% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Edmund's Catholic Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 896 places 844 on roll 2014/15 896 places 841 on roll 2015/16 896 places 841 on roll 2016/17 896 places 861 on roll 2017/18 896 places 878 on roll 2018/19 896 places 913 on roll 2020/21 896 places 1,001 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,080 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,140 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,115 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,126 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 WV3 9DU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139891).

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.