School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Poynton High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named Poynton High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 243 and 248 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.

1.02

first choices for every place available

248 first preferences for 243 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Poynton High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Poynton 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

Poynton High School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Poynton 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 per place 243 first choices 242 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 220 first choices 242 places 2017/18 0.81 per place 231 first choices 285 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 205 first choices 242 places 2019/20 0.81 per place 196 first choices 243 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 223 first choices 246 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 226 first choices 244 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 235 first choices 247 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 243 first choices 246 places 2024/25 0.95 per place 232 first choices 244 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 229 first choices 246 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 248 first choices 243 places
First preferences per place at Poynton High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 248 first preferences for 243 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Poynton 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
2015/16 242 243 230 1
2016/17 242 220 216 0.91
2017/18 285 231 229 0.81
2018/19 242 205 205 0.85
2019/20 243 196 192 0.81
2020/21 246 223 222 0.91
2021/22 244 226 224 0.93
2022/23 247 235 233 0.95
2023/24 246 243 233 0.99
2024/25 244 232 225 0.95
2025/26 246 229 225 0.93
2026/27 243 248 231 1.02

Places offered

243

in 2026/27

Named first choice

248

491 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.1%

231 of 248

Offers to families outside the council

15%

36 of 243 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 111436.

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

1,230

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,214

98.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

16

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

322

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 Poynton 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 Poynton High School reported 16 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Poynton High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,529 places 1,590 on roll 2010/11 1,529 places 1,579 on roll 2011/12 1,552 places 1,579 on roll 2012/13 1,552 places 1,556 on roll 2013/14 1,552 places 1,555 on roll 2014/15 1,552 places 1,565 on roll 2015/16 1,552 places 1,511 on roll 2016/17 1,552 places 1,471 on roll 2017/18 1,552 places 1,465 on roll 2018/19 1,552 places 1,416 on roll 2020/21 1,552 places 1,394 on roll 2021/22 1,552 places 1,415 on roll 2022/23 1,552 places 1,457 on roll 2023/24 1,552 places 1,498 on roll 2024/25 1,552 places 1,493 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 SK12 1PU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146387).

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.