School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Hathershaw College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named The Hathershaw College as their first choice did not get a place: 167 put it first and 158 of them were offered one.

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

9

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

167 first preferences for 200 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Hathershaw College

There is no published appeal success rate for The Hathershaw College, 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 Hathershaw College turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 9 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 The Hathershaw College, 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 per place 205 first choices 205 places 2016/17 1.17 per place 240 first choices 206 places 2017/18 1.09 per place 223 first choices 204 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 224 first choices 206 places 2019/20 1.25 per place 258 first choices 207 places 2020/21 1.36 per place 283 first choices 208 places 2021/22 1.25 per place 258 first choices 206 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 236 first choices 205 places 2023/24 1.19 per place 242 first choices 204 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 214 first choices 198 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 185 first choices 199 places 2026/27 0.83 per place 167 first choices 200 places
First preferences per place at The Hathershaw College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 167 first preferences for 200 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Hathershaw College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 205 205 185 1
2016/17 206 240 186 1.17
2017/18 204 223 165 1.09
2018/19 206 224 162 1.09
2019/20 207 258 173 1.25
2020/21 208 283 176 1.36
2021/22 206 258 178 1.25
2022/23 205 236 170 1.15
2023/24 204 242 188 1.19
2024/25 198 214 165 1.08
2025/26 199 185 165 0.93
2026/27 200 167 158 0.83

Places offered

200

in 2026/27

Named first choice

167

403 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.6%

158 of 167

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 200 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,049

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Hathershaw College 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 Hathershaw College reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Hathershaw College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,050 places 1,046 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 1,039 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 1,045 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,051 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,060 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,054 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,059 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,063 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,069 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,054 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,054 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,055 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,049 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
Oldham

Postcode OL8 3EP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137039).

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.