School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Elton High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 76 families who named The Elton High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 210 and 277 put it first.

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

1.32

first choices for every place available

277 first preferences for 210 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Elton High School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Elton 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 Bury 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 Bury, 27.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 118 of 427 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 Bury.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bury 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

The Elton High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Elton 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 1.29 per place 250 first choices 194 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 223 first choices 200 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 230 first choices 200 places 2018/19 1.5 per place 289 first choices 193 places 2019/20 1.85 per place 371 first choices 200 places 2020/21 1.62 per place 324 first choices 200 places 2021/22 1.47 per place 294 first choices 200 places 2022/23 1.41 per place 281 first choices 199 places 2023/24 1.49 per place 316 first choices 212 places 2024/25 1.56 per place 315 first choices 202 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 264 first choices 201 places 2026/27 1.32 per place 277 first choices 210 places
First preferences per place at The Elton High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 277 first preferences for 210 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Elton 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
2015/16 194 250 188 1.29
2016/17 200 223 169 1.11
2017/18 200 230 178 1.15
2018/19 193 289 185 1.5
2019/20 200 371 190 1.85
2020/21 200 324 197 1.62
2021/22 200 294 190 1.47
2022/23 199 281 196 1.41
2023/24 212 316 207 1.49
2024/25 202 315 201 1.56
2025/26 201 264 195 1.31
2026/27 210 277 201 1.32

Places offered

210

in 2026/27

Named first choice

277

575 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.6%

201 of 277

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 210 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

1,013

101.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

reported as full or beyond

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 The Elton 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 The Elton High School 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 The Elton High School 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 2009/10 950 places 945 on roll 2010/11 950 places 959 on roll 2011/12 950 places 983 on roll 2012/13 1,000 places 1,004 on roll 2013/14 1,000 places 1,006 on roll 2014/15 1,000 places 1,004 on roll 2015/16 1,000 places 990 on roll 2016/17 1,000 places 1,013 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 1,022 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 1,028 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 1,030 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 1,010 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 1,030 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 1,038 on roll 2024/25 1,000 places 1,013 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bury

Postcode BL8 1RN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 105354).

Other contested secondary schools in Bury

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.