School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ellesmere Park High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Ellesmere Park High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 173 and 177 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

177 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ellesmere Park High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ellesmere 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 Salford 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 Salford, 14.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 56 of 395 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 Salford.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Salford 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

Ellesmere Park High School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 9 of those years. In the other 2 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 Ellesmere 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 0.64 per place 81 first choices 127 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 130 first choices 147 places 2017/18 1.13 per place 167 first choices 148 places 2018/19 1.43 per place 213 first choices 149 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 195 first choices 148 places 2020/21 1.5 per place 225 first choices 150 places 2021/22 1.46 per place 214 first choices 147 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 169 first choices 147 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 189 first choices 177 places 2024/25 1.61 per place 229 first choices 142 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 175 first choices 177 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 177 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at Ellesmere Park High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 177 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ellesmere 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
2015/16 127 81 81 0.64
2016/17 147 130 109 0.88
2017/18 148 167 122 1.13
2018/19 149 213 134 1.43
2019/20 148 195 137 1.32
2020/21 150 225 136 1.5
2021/22 147 214 131 1.46
2022/23 147 169 122 1.15
2023/24 177 189 151 1.07
2024/25 142 229 125 1.61
2025/26 177 175 152 0.99
2026/27 173 177 141 1.02

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

177

481 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.7%

141 of 177

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 173 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 105982.

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

795

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

798

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

reported as full or beyond

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 Ellesmere 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 Ellesmere Park High School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ellesmere Park High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 900 places 752 on roll 2010/11 900 places 747 on roll 2011/12 900 places 725 on roll 2012/13 900 places 682 on roll 2013/14 750 places 658 on roll 2014/15 750 places 592 on roll 2015/16 750 places 577 on roll 2016/17 750 places 613 on roll 2017/18 750 places 648 on roll 2018/19 750 places 716 on roll 2020/21 750 places 775 on roll 2021/22 750 places 787 on roll 2022/23 750 places 794 on roll 2023/24 750 places 813 on roll 2024/25 795 places 798 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. Ellesmere Park High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Ellesmere Park High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
23 September 2021 No fault found Read the determination

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
Salford

Postcode M30 9BP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144200).

Other contested secondary schools in Salford

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.