School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Co-op Academy North Manchester?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 50 families who named Co-op Academy North Manchester as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 225 and 248 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Manchester actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

1.10

first choices for every place available

248 first preferences for 225 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Co-op Academy North Manchester

There is no published appeal success rate for Co-op Academy North Manchester, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Manchester 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 Manchester, 17.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 202 of 1,159 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 Manchester.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Manchester 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

Co-op Academy North Manchester turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 10 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 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 Co-op Academy North Manchester, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.55 per place 119 first choices 215 places 2018/19 0.77 per place 109 first choices 141 places 2019/20 0.84 per place 148 first choices 176 places 2020/21 0.73 per place 169 first choices 233 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 201 first choices 237 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 204 first choices 228 places 2023/24 0.84 per place 199 first choices 238 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 233 first choices 236 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 250 first choices 231 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 248 first choices 225 places
First preferences per place at Co-op Academy North Manchester. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 248 first preferences for 225 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Co-op Academy North Manchester, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 215 119 119 0.55
2018/19 141 109 109 0.77
2019/20 176 148 144 0.84
2020/21 233 169 169 0.73
2021/22 237 201 201 0.85
2022/23 228 204 204 0.89
2023/24 238 199 199 0.84
2024/25 236 233 205 0.99
2025/26 231 250 211 1.08
2026/27 225 248 198 1.1

Places offered

225

in 2026/27

Named first choice

248

636 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.8%

198 of 248

Offers to families outside the council

6%

13 of 225 offers

How close you had to live

Co-op Academy North Manchester filled its places in 2026, and 2,039m — 1.27 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the category 5 criterion.

Last place offered at

1.27 mi

2,039 metres, 2026

Under criterion

Category 5

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Manchester Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,505

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,255

83.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

250

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

120

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 Co-op Academy North Manchester 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 Co-op Academy North Manchester reported 250 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.4% 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Co-op Academy North Manchester from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,200 places 853 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 957 on roll 2017/18 1,320 places 1,040 on roll 2018/19 1,320 places 1,021 on roll 2020/21 1,320 places 1,057 on roll 2021/22 1,320 places 1,094 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 1,205 on roll 2023/24 1,320 places 1,257 on roll 2024/25 1,625 places 1,255 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
Manchester

Postcode M9 7SS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142762).

Other contested secondary schools in Manchester

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.