School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hillside High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 89 families who named Hillside High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 162 and 242 put it first.

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

1.49

first choices for every place available

242 first preferences for 162 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hillside High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hillside 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

Hillside High School turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 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 Hillside 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 0.95 per place 105 first choices 110 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 112 first choices 128 places 2017/18 0.74 per place 110 first choices 149 places 2018/19 0.78 per place 110 first choices 141 places 2019/20 0.71 per place 86 first choices 121 places 2020/21 0.87 per place 102 first choices 117 places 2021/22 0.6 per place 69 first choices 115 places 2022/23 0.53 per place 79 first choices 150 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 138 first choices 141 places 2024/25 0.85 per place 144 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 200 first choices 169 places 2026/27 1.49 per place 242 first choices 162 places
First preferences per place at Hillside High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 242 first preferences for 162 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hillside 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
2015/16 110 105 105 0.95
2016/17 128 112 111 0.88
2017/18 149 110 110 0.74
2018/19 141 110 108 0.78
2019/20 121 86 84 0.71
2020/21 117 102 100 0.87
2021/22 115 69 68 0.6
2022/23 150 79 77 0.53
2023/24 141 138 122 0.98
2024/25 170 144 131 0.85
2025/26 169 200 151 1.18
2026/27 162 242 153 1.49

Places offered

162

in 2026/27

Named first choice

242

493 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

63.2%

153 of 242

Offers to families outside the council

44%

71 of 162 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 104946.

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Hillside 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 Hillside 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 – A Looked After Child is either a child who is in the care of a local authority, or being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions (definition used is in Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989); or, those 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. Previously Looked After Children are those who were previously looked after but immediately after being looked after were adopted or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order.
2 Sibling - Children who have either a brother or sister living in the same house who already attends the school as long as they will still be at the school in September 2026. (1) Sibling is defined in these arrangements as: Brothers and sisters including step-children, foster children and half-brothers and sisters, adopted brothers and sisters or children of the parent(s)/carer(s) partner, living in the same family unit at the same address, who attend the school in question, as long as they will be at the school in September 2026.
3 Children of staff – Where the member of staff has been employed at Hillside High School for 2 or more years at the time of application, or the member of staff was recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. (1) Parent(s)/carer(s) must state the employee’s name on their admission application form. Details will be validated by the school.
4 Contributory Primary Schools - Children who, at the start of the Spring Term 2026, are on the roll of either Bedford Primary School or Christ Church CE Primary School. (1)
5 Distance - Other requests that name the school as a preference.(1)

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.

Hillside 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

972

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

740

76.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

232

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 Hillside 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 Hillside High School reported 232 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 76.1% 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 Hillside High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 954 places 846 on roll 2010/11 972 places 882 on roll 2011/12 972 places 907 on roll 2012/13 972 places 920 on roll 2013/14 1,008 places 907 on roll 2014/15 970 places 863 on roll 2015/16 970 places 797 on roll 2016/17 970 places 725 on roll 2017/18 970 places 676 on roll 2018/19 970 places 645 on roll 2020/21 970 places 643 on roll 2021/22 970 places 650 on roll 2022/23 970 places 674 on roll 2023/24 970 places 703 on roll 2024/25 972 places 740 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Sefton

Postcode L20 9NU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141693).

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.