School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Litherland High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Litherland High School as their first choice did not get a place: 167 put it first and 159 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.

8

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

167 first preferences for 171 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Litherland High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Litherland 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

Litherland High School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Litherland 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 0.81 per place 91 first choices 112 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 127 first choices 141 places 2017/18 0.73 per place 90 first choices 124 places 2018/19 0.57 per place 70 first choices 123 places 2019/20 0.84 per place 109 first choices 130 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 117 first choices 128 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 181 first choices 149 places 2022/23 1.48 per place 236 first choices 159 places 2023/24 1.28 per place 185 first choices 144 places 2024/25 1.45 per place 207 first choices 143 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 197 first choices 172 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 167 first choices 171 places
First preferences per place at Litherland High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 167 first preferences for 171 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Litherland 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
2015/16 112 91 91 0.81
2016/17 141 127 127 0.9
2017/18 124 90 90 0.73
2018/19 123 70 70 0.57
2019/20 130 109 109 0.84
2020/21 128 117 112 0.91
2021/22 149 181 138 1.21
2022/23 159 236 154 1.48
2023/24 144 185 132 1.28
2024/25 143 207 139 1.45
2025/26 172 197 160 1.15
2026/27 171 167 159 0.98

Places offered

171

in 2026/27

Named first choice

167

319 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.2%

159 of 167

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 171 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 104951.

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

720

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

723

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

reported as full or beyond

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 Litherland 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 Litherland 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Litherland High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,072 places 951 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 892 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 881 on roll 2012/13 1,200 places 874 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 822 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 772 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 719 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 683 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 606 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 569 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 621 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 643 on roll 2022/23 720 places 683 on roll 2023/24 720 places 727 on roll 2024/25 720 places 723 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 L21 0DB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141694).

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.