School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kirkby High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Kirkby High School as their first choice did not get a place: 158 put it first and 150 of them were offered one.

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

8

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

158 first preferences for 195 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kirkby High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Kirkby 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 Knowsley 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 Knowsley, 20.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 54 of 260 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 Knowsley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Knowsley 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

Kirkby High School turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Kirkby 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 0.86 per place 142 first choices 166 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 167 first choices 184 places 2017/18 1.08 per place 212 first choices 196 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 139 first choices 158 places 2019/20 0.77 per place 151 first choices 196 places 2020/21 0.85 per place 159 first choices 188 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 169 first choices 195 places 2022/23 0.7 per place 152 first choices 216 places 2023/24 0.68 per place 153 first choices 224 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 181 first choices 202 places 2025/26 0.79 per place 158 first choices 200 places 2026/27 0.81 per place 158 first choices 195 places
First preferences per place at Kirkby High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 158 first preferences for 195 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kirkby 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
2015/16 166 142 142 0.86
2016/17 184 167 167 0.91
2017/18 196 212 195 1.08
2018/19 158 139 139 0.88
2019/20 196 151 151 0.77
2020/21 188 159 159 0.85
2021/22 195 169 161 0.87
2022/23 216 152 152 0.7
2023/24 224 153 153 0.68
2024/25 202 181 156 0.9
2025/26 200 158 157 0.79
2026/27 195 158 150 0.81

Places offered

195

in 2026/27

Named first choice

158

382 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.9%

150 of 158

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 195 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

1,000

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,026

102.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

26

reported as full or beyond

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 Kirkby 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 Kirkby 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Kirkby High School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,200 places 834 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 789 on roll 2015/16 1,188 places 789 on roll 2016/17 1,188 places 811 on roll 2017/18 1,355 places 830 on roll 2018/19 1,355 places 876 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 943 on roll 2021/22 1,159 places 935 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 954 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 1,023 on roll 2024/25 1,000 places 1,026 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Knowsley

Postcode L32 9PP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140001).

Other contested secondary schools in Knowsley

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.