School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Birkdale High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Birkdale High School as their first choice did not get a place: 188 put it first and 184 of them were offered one.

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

4

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

188 first preferences for 190 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Birkdale High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Birkdale 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 Sefton 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 Sefton, 21.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 137 of 628 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 Sefton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sefton 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

Birkdale High School turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Birkdale 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 0.93 per place 123 first choices 132 places 2016/17 0.84 per place 122 first choices 145 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 148 first choices 164 places 2018/19 0.85 per place 119 first choices 140 places 2019/20 1.04 per place 198 first choices 191 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 178 first choices 190 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 161 first choices 180 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 183 first choices 176 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 184 first choices 188 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 184 first choices 183 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 198 first choices 184 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 188 first choices 190 places
First preferences per place at Birkdale High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 188 first preferences for 190 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Birkdale 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
2015/16 132 123 123 0.93
2016/17 145 122 122 0.84
2017/18 164 148 148 0.9
2018/19 140 119 119 0.85
2019/20 191 198 180 1.04
2020/21 190 178 176 0.94
2021/22 180 161 161 0.89
2022/23 176 183 165 1.04
2023/24 188 184 170 0.98
2024/25 183 184 177 1.01
2025/26 184 198 177 1.08
2026/27 190 188 184 0.99

Places offered

190

in 2026/27

Named first choice

188

316 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.9%

184 of 188

Offers to families outside the council

3%

5 of 190 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

960

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

921

95.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

39

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 Birkdale 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 Birkdale High School reported 39 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Birkdale High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 940 places 892 on roll 2012/13 940 places 834 on roll 2013/14 940 places 769 on roll 2014/15 960 places 705 on roll 2015/16 960 places 691 on roll 2016/17 960 places 663 on roll 2017/18 960 places 693 on roll 2018/19 930 places 712 on roll 2020/21 930 places 814 on roll 2021/22 930 places 849 on roll 2022/23 960 places 888 on roll 2023/24 960 places 929 on roll 2024/25 960 places 921 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
Sefton

Postcode PR8 3DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137297).

Other contested secondary schools in Sefton

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.