School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Blue Coat School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 30 families who named The Blue Coat School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 178 and 197 put it first.

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

1.11

first choices for every place available

197 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Blue Coat School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Blue Coat 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

The Blue Coat School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Blue Coat 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 1.27 per place 187 first choices 147 places 2016/17 1.35 per place 199 first choices 147 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 225 first choices 178 places 2018/19 1.46 per place 262 first choices 179 places 2019/20 1.45 per place 259 first choices 179 places 2020/21 1.39 per place 255 first choices 184 places 2021/22 1.59 per place 286 first choices 180 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 237 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.29 per place 228 first choices 177 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 234 first choices 181 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 232 first choices 178 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 197 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at The Blue Coat School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 197 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Blue Coat School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 147 187 146 1.27
2016/17 147 199 143 1.35
2017/18 178 225 172 1.26
2018/19 179 262 174 1.46
2019/20 179 259 172 1.45
2020/21 184 255 182 1.39
2021/22 180 286 175 1.59
2022/23 179 237 176 1.32
2023/24 177 228 170 1.29
2024/25 181 234 172 1.29
2025/26 178 232 169 1.3
2026/27 178 197 167 1.11

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

197

398 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.8%

167 of 197

Offers to families outside the council

35%

63 of 178 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

897

99.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 The Blue Coat 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 The Blue Coat School reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Blue Coat School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,051 places 983 on roll 2012/13 1,051 places 992 on roll 2013/14 1,051 places 986 on roll 2014/15 1,051 places 995 on roll 2015/16 1,051 places 1,002 on roll 2016/17 1,051 places 1,011 on roll 2017/18 1,051 places 1,048 on roll 2018/19 1,300 places 1,106 on roll 2020/21 1,300 places 1,199 on roll 2021/22 1,300 places 1,249 on roll 2022/23 1,300 places 1,246 on roll 2023/24 1,300 places 1,251 on roll 2024/25 1,300 places 1,244 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Liverpool

Postcode L15 9EE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137916).

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.