School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Greenbank High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Greenbank High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 210 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

210 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Greenbank High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Greenbank 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

Greenbank High School 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 Greenbank 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 0.9 per place 184 first choices 205 places 2016/17 0.85 per place 159 first choices 187 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 203 first choices 205 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 218 first choices 204 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 206 first choices 209 places 2020/21 1.07 per place 219 first choices 204 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 202 first choices 207 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 207 first choices 205 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 234 first choices 209 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 198 first choices 204 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 212 first choices 206 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 210 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at Greenbank High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 210 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Greenbank 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
2015/16 205 184 183 0.9
2016/17 187 159 159 0.85
2017/18 205 203 188 0.99
2018/19 204 218 198 1.07
2019/20 209 206 203 0.99
2020/21 204 219 189 1.07
2021/22 207 202 195 0.98
2022/23 205 207 192 1.01
2023/24 209 234 198 1.12
2024/25 204 198 198 0.97
2025/26 206 212 197 1.03
2026/27 204 210 199 1.03

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

210

354 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.8%

199 of 210

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 204 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

1,052

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,039

98.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

13

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 Greenbank 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 Greenbank High School reported 13 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Greenbank High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,030 places 873 on roll 2012/13 1,030 places 881 on roll 2013/14 1,030 places 861 on roll 2014/15 1,030 places 908 on roll 2015/16 1,030 places 949 on roll 2016/17 1,030 places 940 on roll 2017/18 1,030 places 982 on roll 2018/19 1,030 places 1,001 on roll 2020/21 1,030 places 1,016 on roll 2021/22 1,030 places 1,039 on roll 2022/23 1,030 places 1,037 on roll 2023/24 1,030 places 1,050 on roll 2024/25 1,052 places 1,039 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 2LT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137604).

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.