School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bishop Heber High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Bishop Heber High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 170 and 173 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

173 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bishop Heber High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bishop Heber 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 West and Chester 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 West and Chester, 33.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 78 of 232 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 West and Chester.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cheshire West and Chester 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

Bishop Heber High School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Bishop Heber 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 1.12 per place 198 first choices 176 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 168 first choices 166 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 203 first choices 184 places 2018/19 1.05 per place 198 first choices 188 places 2019/20 1 per place 177 first choices 177 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 194 first choices 192 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 172 first choices 175 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 192 first choices 191 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 181 first choices 180 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 182 first choices 180 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 206 first choices 193 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 173 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at Bishop Heber High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 173 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bishop Heber 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
2015/16 176 198 173 1.12
2016/17 166 168 164 1.01
2017/18 184 203 176 1.1
2018/19 188 198 183 1.05
2019/20 177 177 169 1
2020/21 192 194 190 1.01
2021/22 175 172 171 0.98
2022/23 191 192 189 1.01
2023/24 180 181 176 1.01
2024/25 180 182 179 1.01
2025/26 193 206 192 1.07
2026/27 170 173 170 1.02

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

173

231 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.3%

170 of 173

Offers to families outside the council

20%

34 of 170 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,040

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

10

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

271

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 Bishop Heber 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 Bishop Heber High School reported 10 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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 Bishop Heber High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,088 places 1,034 on roll 2010/11 1,088 places 1,069 on roll 2011/12 1,134 places 1,117 on roll 2012/13 1,121 places 1,144 on roll 2013/14 1,121 places 1,212 on roll 2014/15 1,121 places 1,239 on roll 2015/16 1,321 places 1,260 on roll 2016/17 1,321 places 1,282 on roll 2017/18 1,321 places 1,285 on roll 2018/19 1,321 places 1,303 on roll 2020/21 1,321 places 1,312 on roll 2021/22 1,321 places 1,290 on roll 2022/23 1,321 places 1,267 on roll 2023/24 1,321 places 1,255 on roll 2024/25 1,321 places 1,279 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Cheshire West and Chester

Postcode SY14 8JD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 111424).

Other contested secondary schools in Cheshire West and Chester

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.