School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Walton High School?

In 2026/27, Walton High School offered 181 places and 173 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.96

first choices for every place available

173 first preferences for 181 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Walton High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Walton 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

Walton High School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Walton 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 0.98 per place 215 first choices 219 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 243 first choices 219 places 2017/18 1.08 per place 226 first choices 210 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 236 first choices 211 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 244 first choices 220 places 2020/21 1.07 per place 229 first choices 215 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 218 first choices 206 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 207 first choices 209 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 227 first choices 208 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 210 first choices 201 places 2025/26 1 per place 215 first choices 216 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 173 first choices 181 places
First preferences per place at Walton High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 173 first preferences for 181 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Walton 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
2015/16 219 215 215 0.98
2016/17 219 243 215 1.11
2017/18 210 226 206 1.08
2018/19 211 236 202 1.12
2019/20 220 244 213 1.11
2020/21 215 229 212 1.07
2021/22 206 218 202 1.06
2022/23 209 207 199 0.99
2023/24 208 227 201 1.09
2024/25 201 210 191 1.04
2025/26 216 215 204 1
2026/27 181 173 173 0.96

Places offered

181

in 2026/27

Named first choice

173

294 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

173 of 173

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 181 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 124416.

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

1,006

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,052

104.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

46

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

320

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 Walton 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 Walton 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 Walton High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,289 places 1,335 on roll 2010/11 1,302 places 1,316 on roll 2011/12 1,302 places 1,323 on roll 2012/13 1,314 places 1,304 on roll 2013/14 1,314 places 1,279 on roll 2014/15 1,304 places 1,256 on roll 2015/16 1,304 places 1,263 on roll 2016/17 1,340 places 1,292 on roll 2017/18 1,326 places 1,271 on roll 2018/19 1,326 places 1,317 on roll 2020/21 1,326 places 1,332 on roll 2021/22 1,326 places 1,340 on roll 2022/23 1,326 places 1,310 on roll 2023/24 1,326 places 1,264 on roll 2024/25 1,326 places 1,263 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 ST17 0LJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142987).

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.