School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wardle Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Wardle Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 259 put it first and 251 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.

8

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

259 first preferences for 264 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wardle Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Wardle 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

Wardle Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Wardle 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 0.91 per place 246 first choices 270 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 221 first choices 227 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 226 first choices 240 places 2018/19 1.04 per place 260 first choices 250 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 282 first choices 265 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 291 first choices 236 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 276 first choices 287 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 302 first choices 289 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 287 first choices 289 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 284 first choices 256 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 260 first choices 230 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 259 first choices 264 places
First preferences per place at Wardle Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 259 first preferences for 264 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wardle Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 270 246 239 0.91
2016/17 227 221 210 0.97
2017/18 240 226 222 0.94
2018/19 250 260 225 1.04
2019/20 265 282 240 1.06
2020/21 236 291 226 1.23
2021/22 287 276 263 0.96
2022/23 289 302 278 1.04
2023/24 289 287 268 0.99
2024/25 256 284 231 1.11
2025/26 230 260 215 1.13
2026/27 264 259 251 0.98

Places offered

264

in 2026/27

Named first choice

259

552 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.9%

251 of 259

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 264 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

1,375

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,359

98.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

16

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 Wardle 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 Wardle Academy reported 16 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.8% 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 Wardle 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 1,200 places 1,104 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,143 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,160 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,171 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,190 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,212 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,215 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,246 on roll 2022/23 1,300 places 1,304 on roll 2023/24 1,347 places 1,356 on roll 2024/25 1,375 places 1,359 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Wardle Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Wardle Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
23 September 2020 Arrangements did not comply REF3747

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 9RD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140055).

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.