School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Falinge Park High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Falinge Park High School as their first choice did not get a place: 261 put it first and 254 of them were offered one.

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

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

261 first preferences for 266 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Falinge Park High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Falinge Park 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 Rochdale 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 Rochdale, 21.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 76 of 357 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 Rochdale.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Rochdale 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

Falinge Park High School turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Falinge Park 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 0.96 per place 216 first choices 225 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 232 first choices 237 places 2017/18 1.03 per place 278 first choices 270 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 262 first choices 269 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 256 first choices 268 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 259 first choices 274 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 236 first choices 265 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 256 first choices 259 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 271 first choices 261 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 264 first choices 258 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 279 first choices 263 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 261 first choices 266 places
First preferences per place at Falinge Park High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 261 first preferences for 266 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Falinge Park 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
2015/16 225 216 208 0.96
2016/17 237 232 229 0.98
2017/18 270 278 260 1.03
2018/19 269 262 258 0.97
2019/20 268 256 250 0.96
2020/21 274 259 251 0.95
2021/22 265 236 228 0.89
2022/23 259 256 247 0.99
2023/24 261 271 226 1.04
2024/25 258 264 239 1.02
2025/26 263 279 248 1.06
2026/27 266 261 254 0.98

Places offered

266

in 2026/27

Named first choice

261

583 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.3%

254 of 261

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 266 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 105837.

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

1,365

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,361

99.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

4

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 Falinge Park 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 Falinge Park High School reported 4 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.7% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Falinge Park High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,282 places 1,179 on roll 2010/11 1,282 places 1,164 on roll 2011/12 1,282 places 1,162 on roll 2012/13 1,282 places 1,169 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,135 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,166 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,162 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,196 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,220 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,251 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,330 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,353 on roll 2022/23 1,360 places 1,355 on roll 2023/24 1,361 places 1,357 on roll 2024/25 1,365 places 1,361 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
Rochdale

Postcode OL12 6LD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150227).

Other contested secondary schools in Rochdale

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.