School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Neston High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named Neston High School as their first choice did not get a place: 294 put it first and 285 of them were offered one.

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

9

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

294 first preferences for 302 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Neston High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Neston 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

Neston 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 Neston 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 1.09 per place 291 first choices 267 places 2016/17 1.18 per place 321 first choices 271 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 336 first choices 296 places 2018/19 1.35 per place 400 first choices 296 places 2019/20 1.1 per place 329 first choices 298 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 315 first choices 293 places 2021/22 1.09 per place 320 first choices 293 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 355 first choices 295 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 331 first choices 294 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 296 first choices 290 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 299 first choices 289 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 294 first choices 302 places
First preferences per place at Neston High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 294 first preferences for 302 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Neston 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
2015/16 267 291 238 1.09
2016/17 271 321 253 1.18
2017/18 296 336 285 1.14
2018/19 296 400 287 1.35
2019/20 298 329 284 1.1
2020/21 293 315 280 1.08
2021/22 293 320 279 1.09
2022/23 295 355 283 1.2
2023/24 294 331 285 1.13
2024/25 290 296 271 1.02
2025/26 289 299 275 1.03
2026/27 302 294 285 0.97

Places offered

302

in 2026/27

Named first choice

294

647 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.9%

285 of 294

Offers to families outside the council

38%

115 of 302 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,492

99.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

8

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

219

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 Neston 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 Neston High School reported 8 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.5% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Neston High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,719 places 1,665 on roll 2013/14 1,719 places 1,675 on roll 2014/15 1,719 places 1,641 on roll 2015/16 1,719 places 1,645 on roll 2016/17 1,719 places 1,659 on roll 2017/18 1,719 places 1,698 on roll 2018/19 1,719 places 1,728 on roll 2020/21 1,719 places 1,736 on roll 2021/22 1,719 places 1,771 on roll 2022/23 1,719 places 1,754 on roll 2023/24 1,719 places 1,729 on roll 2024/25 1,719 places 1,718 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Neston High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Neston High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
17 August 2017 Arrangements did not comply ADA3328

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 West and Chester

Postcode CH64 9NH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138318).

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.