School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Crompton House Church of England Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 72 families who named The Crompton House Church of England Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 296 and 333 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

333 first preferences for 296 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Crompton House Church of England Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Crompton House Church of England Academy, 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 Crompton House Church of England Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Crompton House Church of England Academy, 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 1.08 per place 231 first choices 214 places 2016/17 1.31 per place 280 first choices 214 places 2017/18 1.24 per place 275 first choices 221 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 270 first choices 221 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 299 first choices 333 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 338 first choices 329 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 348 first choices 330 places 2022/23 1.21 per place 362 first choices 300 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 375 first choices 297 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 343 first choices 294 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 354 first choices 300 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 333 first choices 296 places
First preferences per place at The Crompton House Church of England Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 333 first preferences for 296 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Crompton House Church of England Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 214 231 180 1.08
2016/17 214 280 209 1.31
2017/18 221 275 190 1.24
2018/19 221 270 192 1.22
2019/20 333 299 288 0.9
2020/21 329 338 297 1.03
2021/22 330 348 281 1.05
2022/23 300 362 269 1.21
2023/24 297 375 276 1.26
2024/25 294 343 269 1.17
2025/26 300 354 267 1.18
2026/27 296 333 261 1.12

Places offered

296

in 2026/27

Named first choice

333

870 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.4%

261 of 333

Offers to families outside the council

30%

89 of 296 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria The Crompton House Church of England Academy published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for The Crompton House Church of England Academy, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Children Looked after and Previously Looked After.
2 Children where the Governing body has deemed exceptional social or medical needs.
3 Children of staff employed by Crompton House Church of England School.
4 Faith – Church of England. Places will be offered to students attaining the highest points score as stipulated in the supplementary form Part B, with a minimum of 36 points to qualify for this category. In the event of there being no way of distinguishing between applicants, for example where two or more children have the same points score, the Governors will first apply the sibling tie-breaker, with the student with a sibling being given a higher priority, the second tie-breaker being distance from home to school, with the student closest to the school being given a higher priority. […] criterion continues in the source document
5 Feeder schools of the Crompton House Church of England Multi Academy Trust Places will be offered to students of primary schools that are members of the Crompton House Church of England Multi Academy Trust at the start of the academic year the application for entry to Crompton House is made. If there are insufficient places for all the students applying in this category, The Governing Body will first apply the sibling tie-breaker, with the student with a sibling being given a higher priority, the second tie-breaker being distance from home to school, with the student closest to the school being given a higher priority. […] criterion continues in the source document
6 Faith - Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. Places will be offered to students attaining the highest points score as stipulated in the supplementary form Part B, with a minimum of 36 points to qualify for this category. In the event of there being no way of distinguishing between applicants, for example where two or more children have the same points score, the Governors will first apply the sibling tie-breaker, with the student with a sibling being given a higher priority, the second tie-breaker being distance from home to school, with the student closest to the school being given a higher priority. […] criterion continues in the source document
7 All Other Children In the event that there are remaining places, after the above criteria have been applied, the Governing Body will first apply the sibling tie-breaker, with the student with a sibling being given a higher priority, the second tie-breaker being distance from home to school, with the student closest to the school being given a higher priority. In the event of tie after these considerations, the place will be allocated by a random selection, which is the final tiebreaker. This category includes students of Faith with less than 36 points.

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

The Crompton House Church of England Academy's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,540

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,587

103.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

47

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 The Crompton House Church of England Academy 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 Crompton House Church of England Academy 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 Crompton House Church of England Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,335 places 1,317 on roll 2012/13 1,335 places 1,332 on roll 2013/14 1,335 places 1,318 on roll 2014/15 1,335 places 1,266 on roll 2015/16 1,335 places 1,266 on roll 2016/17 1,335 places 1,304 on roll 2017/18 1,335 places 1,301 on roll 2018/19 1,459 places 1,343 on roll 2020/21 1,643 places 1,621 on roll 2021/22 1,840 places 1,755 on roll 2022/23 1,840 places 1,824 on roll 2023/24 1,840 places 1,885 on roll 2024/25 1,840 places 1,850 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Oldham

Postcode OL2 7HS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137294).

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.