School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Marple Hall School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 74 families who named Marple Hall School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 320 and 387 put it first.

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

1.21

first choices for every place available

387 first preferences for 320 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Marple Hall School

There is no published appeal success rate for Marple Hall 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

Marple Hall School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 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 Marple Hall 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 1.06 per place 314 first choices 296 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 344 first choices 313 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 352 first choices 317 places 2018/19 1.29 per place 383 first choices 296 places 2019/20 1.35 per place 406 first choices 300 places 2020/21 1.22 per place 364 first choices 298 places 2021/22 1.16 per place 343 first choices 295 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 352 first choices 325 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 372 first choices 325 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 382 first choices 316 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 370 first choices 307 places 2026/27 1.21 per place 387 first choices 320 places
First preferences per place at Marple Hall School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 387 first preferences for 320 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Marple Hall School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 296 314 282 1.06
2016/17 313 344 301 1.1
2017/18 317 352 299 1.11
2018/19 296 383 287 1.29
2019/20 300 406 295 1.35
2020/21 298 364 280 1.22
2021/22 295 343 283 1.16
2022/23 325 352 314 1.08
2023/24 325 372 316 1.14
2024/25 316 382 303 1.21
2025/26 307 370 289 1.21
2026/27 320 387 313 1.21

Places offered

320

in 2026/27

Named first choice

387

781 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.9%

313 of 387

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 320 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 106138.

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

1,610

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,553

96.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

57

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 Marple Hall 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 Marple Hall School reported 57 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Marple Hall School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,731 places 1,370 on roll 2010/11 1,736 places 1,398 on roll 2011/12 1,736 places 1,473 on roll 2012/13 1,736 places 1,445 on roll 2013/14 1,736 places 1,403 on roll 2014/15 1,736 places 1,409 on roll 2015/16 1,736 places 1,423 on roll 2016/17 1,614 places 1,424 on roll 2017/18 1,614 places 1,469 on roll 2018/19 1,614 places 1,535 on roll 2020/21 1,610 places 1,557 on roll 2021/22 1,610 places 1,549 on roll 2022/23 1,610 places 1,562 on roll 2023/24 1,610 places 1,554 on roll 2024/25 1,610 places 1,553 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Marple Hall School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Marple Hall School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
23 October 2025 No fault found ADA4424

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 SK6 6LB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 151031).

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.