School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Middlewich High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Middlewich High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 126 and 150 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

150 first preferences for 126 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Middlewich High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Middlewich 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 Cheshire East 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 Cheshire East, 31.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 57 of 181 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 Cheshire East.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cheshire East 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

Middlewich High School turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Middlewich 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 0.98 per place 127 first choices 129 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 124 first choices 136 places 2017/18 0.89 per place 129 first choices 145 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 115 first choices 130 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 139 first choices 143 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 122 first choices 134 places 2021/22 1.11 per place 167 first choices 151 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 141 first choices 132 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 148 first choices 140 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 111 first choices 123 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 114 first choices 123 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 150 first choices 126 places
First preferences per place at Middlewich High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 150 first preferences for 126 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Middlewich 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
2015/16 129 127 127 0.98
2016/17 136 124 121 0.91
2017/18 145 129 129 0.89
2018/19 130 115 115 0.88
2019/20 143 139 131 0.97
2020/21 134 122 122 0.91
2021/22 151 167 144 1.11
2022/23 132 141 127 1.07
2023/24 140 148 133 1.06
2024/25 123 111 111 0.9
2025/26 123 114 114 0.93
2026/27 126 150 125 1.19

Places offered

126

in 2026/27

Named first choice

150

254 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.3%

125 of 150

Offers to families outside the council

27%

34 of 126 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 111410.

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

700

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

673

96.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

27

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 Middlewich 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 Middlewich High School reported 27 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.1% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Middlewich High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 700 places 691 on roll 2010/11 700 places 708 on roll 2011/12 700 places 713 on roll 2012/13 700 places 718 on roll 2013/14 700 places 688 on roll 2014/15 700 places 671 on roll 2015/16 700 places 670 on roll 2016/17 700 places 673 on roll 2017/18 700 places 662 on roll 2018/19 700 places 677 on roll 2020/21 700 places 699 on roll 2021/22 700 places 705 on roll 2022/23 700 places 709 on roll 2023/24 700 places 697 on roll 2024/25 700 places 673 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
Cheshire East

Postcode CW10 9BU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148693).

Other contested secondary schools in Cheshire East

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.