School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Calderstones School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 150 families who named Calderstones School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 258 and 375 put it first.

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

1.45

first choices for every place available

375 first preferences for 258 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Calderstones School

There is no published appeal success rate for Calderstones 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 Liverpool 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 Liverpool, 8.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 185 of 2,150 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 Liverpool.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Liverpool 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

Calderstones School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 9 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 Calderstones 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 0.89 per place 228 first choices 255 places 2016/17 0.79 per place 200 first choices 254 places 2017/18 0.61 per place 162 first choices 265 places 2018/19 0.65 per place 171 first choices 263 places 2019/20 0.62 per place 164 first choices 265 places 2020/21 0.62 per place 163 first choices 265 places 2021/22 0.72 per place 189 first choices 264 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 225 first choices 264 places 2023/24 0.96 per place 262 first choices 274 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 295 first choices 265 places 2025/26 1.64 per place 406 first choices 248 places 2026/27 1.45 per place 375 first choices 258 places
First preferences per place at Calderstones School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 375 first preferences for 258 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Calderstones School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 255 228 180 0.89
2016/17 254 200 164 0.79
2017/18 265 162 121 0.61
2018/19 263 171 146 0.65
2019/20 265 164 137 0.62
2020/21 265 163 131 0.62
2021/22 264 189 146 0.72
2022/23 264 225 166 0.85
2023/24 274 262 192 0.96
2024/25 265 295 197 1.11
2025/26 248 406 205 1.64
2026/27 258 375 225 1.45

Places offered

258

in 2026/27

Named first choice

375

1,308 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

60%

225 of 375

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 258 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

1,328

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,346

101.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

18

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

220

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 Calderstones 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 Calderstones 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 Calderstones School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,543 places 1,517 on roll 2010/11 1,520 places 1,520 on roll 2011/12 1,520 places 1,523 on roll 2012/13 1,520 places 1,509 on roll 2013/14 1,520 places 1,511 on roll 2014/15 1,520 places 1,482 on roll 2015/16 1,516 places 1,430 on roll 2016/17 1,516 places 1,419 on roll 2017/18 1,516 places 1,435 on roll 2018/19 1,516 places 1,452 on roll 2020/21 1,516 places 1,524 on roll 2021/22 1,548 places 1,534 on roll 2022/23 1,548 places 1,554 on roll 2023/24 1,548 places 1,600 on roll 2024/25 1,548 places 1,568 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
Liverpool

Postcode L18 3HS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 104698).

Other contested secondary schools in Liverpool

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.