School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at West Derby School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 66 families who named West Derby School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 174 and 200 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

200 first preferences for 174 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at West Derby School

There is no published appeal success rate for West Derby 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

West Derby School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 4 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 West Derby 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 1.11 per place 199 first choices 179 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 179 first choices 180 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 199 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 202 first choices 180 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 190 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 204 first choices 180 places 2021/22 0.83 per place 149 first choices 180 places 2022/23 1.21 per place 217 first choices 180 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 141 first choices 190 places 2024/25 0.88 per place 156 first choices 177 places 2025/26 0.81 per place 154 first choices 191 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 200 first choices 174 places
First preferences per place at West Derby School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 200 first preferences for 174 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at West Derby School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 179 199 162 1.11
2016/17 180 179 145 0.99
2017/18 179 199 154 1.11
2018/19 180 202 145 1.12
2019/20 180 190 148 1.06
2020/21 180 204 139 1.13
2021/22 180 149 133 0.83
2022/23 180 217 149 1.21
2023/24 190 141 135 0.74
2024/25 177 156 128 0.88
2025/26 191 154 130 0.81
2026/27 174 200 134 1.15

Places offered

174

in 2026/27

Named first choice

200

515 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67%

134 of 200

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 174 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

939

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

897

95.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

42

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

134

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 West Derby 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 West Derby School reported 42 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.5% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at West Derby School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,050 places 971 on roll 2013/14 1,073 places 960 on roll 2014/15 1,073 places 994 on roll 2015/16 1,073 places 1,026 on roll 2016/17 1,073 places 1,033 on roll 2017/18 1,073 places 1,007 on roll 2018/19 1,073 places 993 on roll 2020/21 1,073 places 1,022 on roll 2021/22 1,073 places 1,029 on roll 2022/23 1,073 places 1,017 on roll 2023/24 1,073 places 1,011 on roll 2024/25 1,073 places 993 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
Liverpool

Postcode L13 7HQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138696).

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.