School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chesterfield High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 53 families who named Chesterfield High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 305 and 327 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

327 first preferences for 305 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chesterfield High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chesterfield 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

Chesterfield High School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 1 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 Chesterfield 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 0.88 per place 167 first choices 190 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 212 first choices 219 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 222 first choices 224 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 217 first choices 232 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 211 first choices 233 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 244 first choices 269 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 274 first choices 286 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 351 first choices 305 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 380 first choices 308 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 360 first choices 307 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 368 first choices 305 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 327 first choices 305 places
First preferences per place at Chesterfield High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 327 first preferences for 305 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chesterfield 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
2015/16 190 167 167 0.88
2016/17 219 212 212 0.97
2017/18 224 222 202 0.99
2018/19 232 217 198 0.94
2019/20 233 211 181 0.91
2020/21 269 244 225 0.91
2021/22 286 274 250 0.96
2022/23 305 351 284 1.15
2023/24 308 380 293 1.23
2024/25 307 360 279 1.17
2025/26 305 368 274 1.21
2026/27 305 327 274 1.07

Places offered

305

in 2026/27

Named first choice

327

686 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.8%

274 of 327

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 305 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Chesterfield High School published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Chesterfield High School, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked After Children and previously Looked After Children. This includes children who appear to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. *
2 Baptised Catholic children who have a sibling* in the school at the time of admission.
3 Baptised Catholic children resident in the parishes of English Martyrs’; Holy Family, Ince Blundell; Our Lady of Compassion, Formby; Our Lady of Victories, Hightown; Our Lady Queen of Peace; St Benet’s; St Jerome’s, Formby; St Mary’s, Little Crosby and St William of York, Thornton.
4 Baptised Catholic children attending a linked parish primary school English Martyrs; Our Lady of Compassion; Our Lady Queen of Peace; St Benedict’s; St Jerome’s; St Mary’s, Little Crosby and St William of York.
5 Baptised Catholic children of current staff. Where the member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made, and/or the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. Parents and carers must state the employee’s name on their admission application form. Details will be validated by the school.
6 Other Baptised Catholic children
7 Other children who have a sibling* in the school at the time of admission.
8 Children attending one of the following Catholic Feeder Primary Schools in the parishes named in
9 above: English Martyrs; Our Lady of Compassion; Our Lady Queen of Peace; St Benedict’s; St Jerome’s; St Mary’s, Little Crosby and St William of York.
10 Children from other Christian denominations. Proof of Baptism in the form of a Baptismal Certificate or confirmation in writing that the applicant is a member of their faith community from an appropriate Minister of Religion is required.
11 Children of other faiths. An appropriate Faith Leader would need to confirm in writing that the applicant is a member of their faith group.
12 Other children. *See Glossary for full definition

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Chesterfield High School's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,317

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,452

110.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

135

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

140

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 Chesterfield 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 Chesterfield 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Chesterfield High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,326 places 1,282 on roll 2012/13 1,326 places 1,257 on roll 2013/14 1,326 places 1,173 on roll 2014/15 1,326 places 1,143 on roll 2015/16 1,326 places 1,163 on roll 2016/17 1,326 places 1,191 on roll 2017/18 1,326 places 1,193 on roll 2018/19 1,326 places 1,153 on roll 2020/21 1,326 places 1,287 on roll 2021/22 1,326 places 1,361 on roll 2022/23 1,457 places 1,430 on roll 2023/24 1,457 places 1,521 on roll 2024/25 1,457 places 1,625 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 L23 9YB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137514).

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.