School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hazel Grove High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Hazel Grove High School as their first choice did not get a place: 247 put it first and 232 of them were offered one.

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

15

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

247 first preferences for 263 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hazel Grove High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hazel Grove 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 Stockport 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 Stockport, 18.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 149 of 802 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 Stockport.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Stockport 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

Hazel Grove High School turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Hazel Grove 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 0.93 per place 229 first choices 246 places 2016/17 0.84 per place 243 first choices 290 places 2017/18 1.06 per place 321 first choices 303 places 2018/19 1 per place 297 first choices 297 places 2019/20 0.85 per place 255 first choices 300 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 258 first choices 265 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 280 first choices 266 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 247 first choices 274 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 319 first choices 278 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 264 first choices 276 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 270 first choices 266 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 247 first choices 263 places
First preferences per place at Hazel Grove High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 247 first preferences for 263 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hazel Grove 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
2015/16 246 229 216 0.93
2016/17 290 243 243 0.84
2017/18 303 321 268 1.06
2018/19 297 297 272 1
2019/20 300 255 251 0.85
2020/21 265 258 238 0.97
2021/22 266 280 248 1.05
2022/23 274 247 238 0.9
2023/24 278 319 266 1.15
2024/25 276 264 240 0.96
2025/26 266 270 232 1.02
2026/27 263 247 232 0.94

Places offered

263

in 2026/27

Named first choice

247

1,048 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.9%

232 of 247

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 263 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

1,384

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,335

96.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

49

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Hazel Grove 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 Hazel Grove High School reported 49 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.5% 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 Hazel Grove High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,382 places 1,052 on roll 2012/13 1,382 places 988 on roll 2013/14 1,308 places 932 on roll 2014/15 1,308 places 982 on roll 2015/16 1,353 places 1,051 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,149 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,307 on roll 2018/19 1,429 places 1,412 on roll 2020/21 1,410 places 1,491 on roll 2021/22 1,410 places 1,439 on roll 2022/23 1,410 places 1,350 on roll 2023/24 1,410 places 1,376 on roll 2024/25 1,584 places 1,429 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
Stockport

Postcode SK7 5JX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137923).

Other contested secondary schools in Stockport

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.