School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hollingworth Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Hollingworth Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 262 and 277 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

277 first preferences for 262 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hollingworth Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Hollingworth 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 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

Hollingworth Academy 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 Hollingworth 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 1.33 per place 331 first choices 249 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 296 first choices 259 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 307 first choices 269 places 2018/19 1.38 per place 371 first choices 268 places 2019/20 1.48 per place 397 first choices 268 places 2020/21 1.38 per place 358 first choices 259 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 319 first choices 263 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 294 first choices 263 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 328 first choices 268 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 300 first choices 258 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 279 first choices 261 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 277 first choices 262 places
First preferences per place at Hollingworth Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 277 first preferences for 262 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hollingworth Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 249 331 249 1.33
2016/17 259 296 250 1.14
2017/18 269 307 260 1.14
2018/19 268 371 260 1.38
2019/20 268 397 265 1.48
2020/21 259 358 254 1.38
2021/22 263 319 257 1.21
2022/23 263 294 252 1.12
2023/24 268 328 257 1.22
2024/25 258 300 241 1.16
2025/26 261 279 242 1.07
2026/27 262 277 250 1.06

Places offered

262

in 2026/27

Named first choice

277

716 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.3%

250 of 277

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 262 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

1,339

99.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

11

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 Hollingworth 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 Hollingworth Academy reported 11 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.2% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hollingworth Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,207 places 1,192 on roll 2014/15 1,207 places 1,205 on roll 2015/16 1,207 places 1,218 on roll 2016/17 1,287 places 1,238 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,260 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,294 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,322 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,323 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,339 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,328 on roll 2024/25 1,350 places 1,339 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 OL16 3DR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140091).

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.