School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Salford City Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named Salford City Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 173 put it first and 154 of them were offered one.

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

19

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

173 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Salford City Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Salford City 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 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

Salford City Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Salford City 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 0.73 per place 85 first choices 116 places 2016/17 0.62 per place 92 first choices 149 places 2017/18 0.54 per place 81 first choices 149 places 2018/19 0.56 per place 100 first choices 178 places 2019/20 0.54 per place 88 first choices 164 places 2020/21 0.62 per place 111 first choices 180 places 2021/22 0.79 per place 142 first choices 179 places 2022/23 0.78 per place 139 first choices 179 places 2023/24 0.71 per place 140 first choices 197 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 163 first choices 179 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 160 first choices 175 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 173 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Salford City Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 173 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Salford City Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 116 85 85 0.73
2016/17 149 92 92 0.62
2017/18 149 81 76 0.54
2018/19 178 100 100 0.56
2019/20 164 88 88 0.54
2020/21 180 111 111 0.62
2021/22 179 142 133 0.79
2022/23 179 139 138 0.78
2023/24 197 140 140 0.71
2024/25 179 163 148 0.91
2025/26 175 160 153 0.91
2026/27 175 173 154 0.99

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

173

274 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89%

154 of 173

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 175 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

935

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

881

94.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

54

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 Salford City 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 Salford City Academy reported 54 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.2% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Salford City Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 750 places 660 on roll 2010/11 950 places 619 on roll 2011/12 750 places 619 on roll 2012/13 750 places 617 on roll 2013/14 750 places 596 on roll 2014/15 750 places 600 on roll 2015/16 750 places 565 on roll 2016/17 750 places 574 on roll 2017/18 750 places 599 on roll 2018/19 750 places 647 on roll 2020/21 750 places 792 on roll 2021/22 870 places 836 on roll 2022/23 870 places 899 on roll 2023/24 870 places 910 on roll 2024/25 935 places 881 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Salford

Postcode M30 7PQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135071).

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.