School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hagley Catholic High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Hagley Catholic High School as their first choice did not get a place: 180 put it first and 168 of them were offered one.

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

12

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

180 first preferences for 185 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hagley Catholic High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hagley Catholic High School, 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

Hagley Catholic High School 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 Hagley Catholic High School, 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 1.07 per place 174 first choices 162 places 2016/17 1.13 per place 182 first choices 161 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 220 first choices 188 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 181 first choices 187 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 192 first choices 180 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 179 first choices 187 places 2021/22 0.88 per place 152 first choices 172 places 2022/23 1.03 per place 193 first choices 187 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 203 first choices 186 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 184 first choices 187 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 199 first choices 189 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 180 first choices 185 places
First preferences per place at Hagley Catholic High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 180 first preferences for 185 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hagley Catholic High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 162 174 151 1.07
2016/17 161 182 154 1.13
2017/18 188 220 185 1.17
2018/19 187 181 175 0.97
2019/20 180 192 170 1.07
2020/21 187 179 174 0.96
2021/22 172 152 152 0.88
2022/23 187 193 175 1.03
2023/24 186 203 173 1.09
2024/25 187 184 172 0.98
2025/26 189 199 177 1.05
2026/27 185 180 168 0.97

Places offered

185

in 2026/27

Named first choice

180

414 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.3%

168 of 180

Offers to families outside the council

76%

141 of 185 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

950

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

938

98.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

12

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

230

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 Hagley Catholic High School 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 Hagley Catholic High School reported 12 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.7% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hagley Catholic High School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,033 places 1,050 on roll 2015/16 1,033 places 1,065 on roll 2016/17 1,033 places 1,079 on roll 2017/18 1,078 places 1,081 on roll 2018/19 1,180 places 1,115 on roll 2020/21 1,190 places 1,135 on roll 2021/22 1,190 places 1,084 on roll 2022/23 1,190 places 1,091 on roll 2023/24 1,180 places 1,106 on roll 2024/25 1,180 places 1,109 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
Worcestershire

Postcode DY8 2XL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141414).

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.