School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Blue Coat CofE School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 383 families who named The Blue Coat CofE School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 232 and 611 put it first.

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

2.63

first choices for every place available

611 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Blue Coat CofE School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Blue Coat CofE 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 Oldham 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 Oldham, 10% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 74 of 740 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 Oldham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Oldham 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 CofE 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 CofE School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.07 per place 498 first choices 241 places 2016/17 2.09 per place 519 first choices 248 places 2017/18 2.72 per place 664 first choices 244 places 2018/19 2.67 per place 654 first choices 245 places 2019/20 2.63 per place 615 first choices 234 places 2020/21 2.83 per place 683 first choices 241 places 2021/22 2.65 per place 638 first choices 241 places 2022/23 2.77 per place 654 first choices 236 places 2023/24 2.16 per place 505 first choices 234 places 2024/25 2.52 per place 578 first choices 229 places 2025/26 2.63 per place 597 first choices 227 places 2026/27 2.63 per place 611 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at The Blue Coat CofE School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 611 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Blue Coat CofE School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 241 498 237 2.07
2016/17 248 519 245 2.09
2017/18 244 664 240 2.72
2018/19 245 654 237 2.67
2019/20 234 615 229 2.63
2020/21 241 683 237 2.83
2021/22 241 638 236 2.65
2022/23 236 654 236 2.77
2023/24 234 505 230 2.16
2024/25 229 578 221 2.52
2025/26 227 597 222 2.63
2026/27 232 611 228 2.63

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

611

1,624 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

37.3%

228 of 611

Offers to families outside the council

30%

69 of 232 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

1,215

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,223

100.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

8

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

440

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 CofE 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 CofE 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Blue Coat CofE School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,427 places 1,450 on roll 2012/13 1,427 places 1,451 on roll 2013/14 1,427 places 1,459 on roll 2014/15 1,537 places 1,492 on roll 2015/16 1,537 places 1,540 on roll 2016/17 1,537 places 1,583 on roll 2017/18 1,537 places 1,630 on roll 2018/19 1,537 places 1,684 on roll 2020/21 1,635 places 1,718 on roll 2021/22 1,635 places 1,675 on roll 2022/23 1,635 places 1,683 on roll 2023/24 1,635 places 1,697 on roll 2024/25 1,655 places 1,663 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Blue Coat CofE School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Blue Coat CofE School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
26 April 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3753

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Oldham

Postcode OL1 3SQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137133).

Other contested secondary schools in Oldham

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.