School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Woodhey High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 55 families who named Woodhey High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 226 and 276 put it first.

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

1.22

first choices for every place available

276 first preferences for 226 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Woodhey High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Woodhey 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

Woodhey High School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Woodhey 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 1.19 per place 236 first choices 199 places 2016/17 1.36 per place 285 first choices 210 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 250 first choices 210 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 244 first choices 201 places 2019/20 1.02 per place 233 first choices 229 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 251 first choices 229 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 253 first choices 220 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 222 first choices 220 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 245 first choices 232 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 212 first choices 220 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 262 first choices 224 places 2026/27 1.22 per place 276 first choices 226 places
First preferences per place at Woodhey High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 276 first preferences for 226 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Woodhey 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
2015/16 199 236 193 1.19
2016/17 210 285 204 1.36
2017/18 210 250 206 1.19
2018/19 201 244 196 1.21
2019/20 229 233 206 1.02
2020/21 229 251 223 1.1
2021/22 220 253 207 1.15
2022/23 220 222 212 1.01
2023/24 232 245 215 1.06
2024/25 220 212 205 0.96
2025/26 224 262 222 1.17
2026/27 226 276 221 1.22

Places offered

226

in 2026/27

Named first choice

276

479 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.1%

221 of 276

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 226 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 105361.

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

1,101

104.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

51

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 Woodhey 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 Woodhey 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 Woodhey High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 960 places 984 on roll 2010/11 960 places 979 on roll 2011/12 960 places 984 on roll 2012/13 1,066 places 1,008 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,030 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,051 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,067 on roll 2016/17 1,161 places 1,096 on roll 2017/18 1,161 places 1,103 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 1,113 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,124 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,128 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,106 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,098 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,101 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Bury

Postcode BL0 9QZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148097).

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.