School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wilmslow High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named Wilmslow High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 352 and 371 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.

1.05

first choices for every place available

371 first preferences for 352 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wilmslow High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wilmslow 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

Wilmslow 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 Wilmslow 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 1.26 per place 374 first choices 297 places 2016/17 1.27 per place 376 first choices 295 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 370 first choices 323 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 374 first choices 330 places 2019/20 1.14 per place 395 first choices 345 places 2020/21 1.15 per place 397 first choices 345 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 351 first choices 354 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 388 first choices 345 places 2023/24 1.2 per place 415 first choices 345 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 417 first choices 360 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 431 first choices 360 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 371 first choices 352 places
First preferences per place at Wilmslow High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 371 first preferences for 352 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wilmslow 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
2015/16 297 374 293 1.26
2016/17 295 376 293 1.27
2017/18 323 370 317 1.15
2018/19 330 374 325 1.13
2019/20 345 395 335 1.14
2020/21 345 397 334 1.15
2021/22 354 351 332 0.99
2022/23 345 388 333 1.12
2023/24 345 415 337 1.2
2024/25 360 417 346 1.16
2025/26 360 431 351 1.2
2026/27 352 371 331 1.05

Places offered

352

in 2026/27

Named first choice

371

539 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.2%

331 of 371

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 352 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

1,755

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,761

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

6

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

477

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 Wilmslow 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 Wilmslow 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 Wilmslow High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,150 2,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,836 places 1,970 on roll 2010/11 1,977 places 1,989 on roll 2011/12 1,977 places 2,007 on roll 2012/13 1,977 places 1,997 on roll 2013/14 1,977 places 1,986 on roll 2014/15 1,977 places 2,010 on roll 2015/16 1,977 places 2,011 on roll 2016/17 1,977 places 1,999 on roll 2017/18 1,977 places 1,981 on roll 2018/19 1,977 places 1,989 on roll 2020/21 1,977 places 2,077 on roll 2021/22 1,977 places 2,136 on roll 2022/23 1,977 places 2,151 on roll 2023/24 2,232 places 2,194 on roll 2024/25 2,232 places 2,208 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
Cheshire East

Postcode SK9 1LZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 111443).

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.