School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Moorside High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Moorside High School as their first choice did not get a place: 158 put it first and 154 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Staffordshire 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

158 first preferences for 164 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Moorside High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Moorside 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 Staffordshire 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 Staffordshire, 20.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 157 of 752 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 Staffordshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Staffordshire 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

Moorside High School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Moorside 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 1.17 per place 197 first choices 168 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 188 first choices 173 places 2017/18 1.21 per place 184 first choices 152 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 205 first choices 168 places 2019/20 1.5 per place 213 first choices 142 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 219 first choices 164 places 2021/22 1.25 per place 208 first choices 166 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 177 first choices 165 places 2023/24 1.1 per place 172 first choices 156 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 172 first choices 158 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 179 first choices 156 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 158 first choices 164 places
First preferences per place at Moorside High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 158 first preferences for 164 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Moorside 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
2015/16 168 197 160 1.17
2016/17 173 188 158 1.09
2017/18 152 184 147 1.21
2018/19 168 205 158 1.22
2019/20 142 213 137 1.5
2020/21 164 219 160 1.34
2021/22 166 208 164 1.25
2022/23 165 177 152 1.07
2023/24 156 172 152 1.1
2024/25 158 172 154 1.09
2025/26 156 179 145 1.15
2026/27 164 158 154 0.96

Places offered

164

in 2026/27

Named first choice

158

265 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.5%

154 of 158

Offers to families outside the council

62%

101 of 164 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 124399.

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

781

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

761

97.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

20

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 Moorside 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 Moorside High School reported 20 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.4% 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 Moorside High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 750 places 773 on roll 2010/11 675 places 780 on roll 2011/12 675 places 771 on roll 2012/13 675 places 762 on roll 2013/14 725 places 746 on roll 2014/15 750 places 774 on roll 2015/16 750 places 776 on roll 2016/17 773 places 790 on roll 2017/18 781 places 791 on roll 2018/19 781 places 816 on roll 2020/21 781 places 785 on roll 2021/22 781 places 776 on roll 2022/23 781 places 766 on roll 2023/24 781 places 749 on roll 2024/25 781 places 761 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
Staffordshire

Postcode ST9 0HP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148508).

Other contested secondary schools in Staffordshire

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.