School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kingsway Park High School?

In 2026/27, Kingsway Park High School offered 230 places and 206 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.90

first choices for every place available

206 first preferences for 230 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kingsway Park High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Kingsway 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

Kingsway Park High School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Kingsway 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 0.91 per place 195 first choices 215 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 196 first choices 204 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 199 first choices 220 places 2018/19 0.82 per place 219 first choices 266 places 2019/20 0.77 per place 201 first choices 260 places 2020/21 0.86 per place 235 first choices 272 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 198 first choices 228 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 224 first choices 264 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 280 first choices 268 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 272 first choices 257 places 2025/26 0.87 per place 223 first choices 256 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 206 first choices 230 places
First preferences per place at Kingsway Park High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 206 first preferences for 230 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kingsway 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
2015/16 215 195 195 0.91
2016/17 204 196 195 0.96
2017/18 220 199 199 0.9
2018/19 266 219 219 0.82
2019/20 260 201 201 0.77
2020/21 272 235 233 0.86
2021/22 228 198 198 0.87
2022/23 264 224 224 0.85
2023/24 268 280 236 1.04
2024/25 257 272 237 1.06
2025/26 256 223 222 0.87
2026/27 230 206 206 0.9

Places offered

230

in 2026/27

Named first choice

206

556 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

206 of 206

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 214 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 135795.

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

1,360

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,315

96.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

45

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 Kingsway 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 Kingsway Park High School reported 45 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.7% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Kingsway Park High School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,200 places 1,134 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,040 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 959 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 943 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 967 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,015 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,074 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,135 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,193 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,302 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,336 on roll 2022/23 1,360 places 1,348 on roll 2023/24 1,360 places 1,343 on roll 2024/25 1,360 places 1,315 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 4XA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148790).

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.