School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Laurus Cheadle Hulme?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 155 families who named Laurus Cheadle Hulme as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 204 and 330 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Stockport actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1.62

first choices for every place available

330 first preferences for 204 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Laurus Cheadle Hulme

There is no published appeal success rate for Laurus Cheadle Hulme, 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

Laurus Cheadle Hulme turned first-choice families away in every one of the 8 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Laurus Cheadle Hulme, 2019/20 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 1.5 per place 304 first choices 202 places 2020/21 1.93 per place 396 first choices 205 places 2021/22 1.6 per place 332 first choices 207 places 2022/23 1.78 per place 357 first choices 200 places 2023/24 1.78 per place 365 first choices 205 places 2024/25 2.02 per place 437 first choices 216 places 2025/26 1.9 per place 391 first choices 206 places 2026/27 1.62 per place 330 first choices 204 places
First preferences per place at Laurus Cheadle Hulme. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 330 first preferences for 204 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Laurus Cheadle Hulme, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 202 304 187 1.5
2020/21 205 396 194 1.93
2021/22 207 332 181 1.6
2022/23 200 357 186 1.78
2023/24 205 365 182 1.78
2024/25 216 437 195 2.02
2025/26 206 391 177 1.9
2026/27 204 330 175 1.62

Places offered

204

in 2026/27

Named first choice

330

1,442 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

53%

175 of 330

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 204 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

1,060

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,054

99.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

6

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 Laurus Cheadle Hulme 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 Laurus Cheadle Hulme reported 6 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.4% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Laurus Cheadle Hulme from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,050 places 212 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 661 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 865 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,068 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,061 on roll 2024/25 1,060 places 1,054 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Stockport

Postcode SK8 5GB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145893).

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.