School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Whalley Range 11-18 High School?

In 2026/27, Whalley Range 11-18 High School offered 252 places and 187 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.74

first choices for every place available

187 first preferences for 252 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Whalley Range 11-18 High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Whalley Range 11-18 High 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 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

Whalley Range 11-18 High School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 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 Whalley Range 11-18 High 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 0.91 per place 247 first choices 270 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 251 first choices 266 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 299 first choices 260 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 241 first choices 270 places 2019/20 0.76 per place 204 first choices 269 places 2020/21 0.8 per place 214 first choices 269 places 2021/22 0.72 per place 193 first choices 268 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 225 first choices 269 places 2023/24 0.73 per place 190 first choices 261 places 2024/25 0.81 per place 216 first choices 266 places 2025/26 0.76 per place 192 first choices 252 places 2026/27 0.74 per place 187 first choices 252 places
First preferences per place at Whalley Range 11-18 High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 187 first preferences for 252 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Whalley Range 11-18 High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 270 247 197 0.91
2016/17 266 251 185 0.94
2017/18 260 299 193 1.15
2018/19 270 241 195 0.89
2019/20 269 204 187 0.76
2020/21 269 214 196 0.8
2021/22 268 193 183 0.72
2022/23 269 225 209 0.84
2023/24 261 190 179 0.73
2024/25 266 216 192 0.81
2025/26 252 192 184 0.76
2026/27 252 187 187 0.74

Places offered

252

in 2026/27

Named first choice

187

547 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

187 of 187

Offers to families outside the council

16%

41 of 251 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,363

101% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Whalley Range 11-18 High 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 Whalley Range 11-18 High 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Whalley Range 11-18 High School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,700 places 1,569 on roll 2015/16 1,650 places 1,546 on roll 2016/17 1,650 places 1,581 on roll 2017/18 1,650 places 1,562 on roll 2018/19 1,650 places 1,568 on roll 2020/21 1,650 places 1,578 on roll 2021/22 1,650 places 1,641 on roll 2022/23 1,650 places 1,665 on roll 2023/24 1,650 places 1,672 on roll 2024/25 1,650 places 1,649 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
Manchester

Postcode M16 8GW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141264).

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.