School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Childwall Sports & Science Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 56 families who named Childwall Sports & Science Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 167 put it first and 111 of them were offered one.

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

56

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

167 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Childwall Sports & Science Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Childwall Sports & Science Academy, 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

Childwall Sports & Science Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Childwall Sports & Science Academy, 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 0.6 per place 72 first choices 121 places 2016/17 0.37 per place 51 first choices 137 places 2017/18 0.49 per place 64 first choices 130 places 2018/19 0.45 per place 79 first choices 174 places 2019/20 0.52 per place 96 first choices 183 places 2020/21 0.64 per place 115 first choices 179 places 2021/22 0.49 per place 93 first choices 188 places 2022/23 0.46 per place 96 first choices 209 places 2023/24 0.86 per place 179 first choices 208 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 159 first choices 190 places 2025/26 0.84 per place 170 first choices 202 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 167 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at Childwall Sports & Science Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 167 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Childwall Sports & Science Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 121 72 72 0.6
2016/17 137 51 51 0.37
2017/18 130 64 64 0.49
2018/19 174 79 79 0.45
2019/20 183 96 96 0.52
2020/21 179 115 105 0.64
2021/22 188 93 92 0.49
2022/23 209 96 96 0.46
2023/24 208 179 134 0.86
2024/25 190 159 120 0.84
2025/26 202 170 129 0.84
2026/27 172 167 111 0.97

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

167

744 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

66.5%

111 of 167

Offers to families outside the council

15%

25 of 172 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

950

105.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

50

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

350

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 Childwall Sports & Science Academy 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 Childwall Sports & Science Academy 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Childwall Sports & Science Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,200 places 1,054 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 934 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 828 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 814 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 809 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 822 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 881 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 984 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 980 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,043 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,093 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 1,041 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
Liverpool

Postcode L15 6XZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138787).

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.