School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Weaverham High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named Weaverham High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 225 and 224 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

first choices for every place available

224 first preferences for 225 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Weaverham High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Weaverham 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

Weaverham High School turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Weaverham 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 0.94 per place 198 first choices 210 places 2016/17 1 per place 220 first choices 221 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 209 first choices 215 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 189 first choices 226 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 220 first choices 235 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 222 first choices 239 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 239 first choices 234 places 2022/23 1.06 per place 249 first choices 234 places 2023/24 0.94 per place 209 first choices 222 places 2024/25 1 per place 232 first choices 231 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 196 first choices 200 places 2026/27 1 per place 224 first choices 225 places
First preferences per place at Weaverham High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 224 first preferences for 225 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Weaverham 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
2015/16 210 198 194 0.94
2016/17 221 220 206 1
2017/18 215 209 202 0.97
2018/19 226 189 189 0.84
2019/20 235 220 216 0.94
2020/21 239 222 221 0.93
2021/22 234 239 228 1.02
2022/23 234 249 230 1.06
2023/24 222 209 207 0.94
2024/25 231 232 220 1
2025/26 200 196 196 0.98
2026/27 225 224 215 1

Places offered

225

in 2026/27

Named first choice

224

461 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96%

215 of 224

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 225 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 111414.

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

1,175

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,164

99.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

11

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 Weaverham 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 Weaverham High School reported 11 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.1% 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 Weaverham High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,050 places 1,029 on roll 2010/11 1,053 places 1,046 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 1,034 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 1,033 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,012 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,020 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,006 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,034 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,043 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,093 on roll 2020/21 1,175 places 1,158 on roll 2021/22 1,223 places 1,161 on roll 2022/23 1,223 places 1,161 on roll 2023/24 1,223 places 1,168 on roll 2024/25 1,175 places 1,164 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 West and Chester

Postcode CW8 3HT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149614).

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.