School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 62 families who named Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 200 and 256 put it first.

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

1.28

first choices for every place available

256 first preferences for 200 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College

There is no published appeal success rate for Blessed Edward Oldcorne 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 Worcestershire 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 Worcestershire, 19.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 90 of 458 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 Worcestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Worcestershire 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

Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Blessed Edward Oldcorne 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 1.03 per place 213 first choices 206 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 230 first choices 211 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 236 first choices 204 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 232 first choices 205 places 2019/20 1.19 per place 249 first choices 210 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 184 first choices 205 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 202 first choices 205 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 208 first choices 212 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 203 first choices 208 places 2024/25 1 per place 205 first choices 206 places 2025/26 1 per place 204 first choices 205 places 2026/27 1.28 per place 256 first choices 200 places
First preferences per place at Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 256 first preferences for 200 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Blessed Edward Oldcorne 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
2015/16 206 213 190 1.03
2016/17 211 230 200 1.09
2017/18 204 236 199 1.16
2018/19 205 232 197 1.13
2019/20 210 249 208 1.19
2020/21 205 184 184 0.9
2021/22 205 202 192 0.99
2022/23 212 208 199 0.98
2023/24 208 203 194 0.98
2024/25 206 205 191 1
2025/26 205 204 191 1
2026/27 200 256 194 1.28

Places offered

200

in 2026/27

Named first choice

256

486 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.8%

194 of 256

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 200 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,044

99.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

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 Blessed Edward Oldcorne 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 Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.4% 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 Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College 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 1,050 places 1,058 on roll 2010/11 1,050 places 1,045 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 1,050 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 1,041 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,044 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,035 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,051 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,044 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,055 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,048 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,043 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,044 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,047 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,055 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,044 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. Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
25 August 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2898

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
Worcestershire

Postcode WR5 2XD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 116999).

Other contested secondary schools in Worcestershire

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.