School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Priestnall School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 64 families who named Priestnall School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 252 and 311 put it first.

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

1.23

first choices for every place available

311 first preferences for 252 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Priestnall School

There is no published appeal success rate for Priestnall 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

Priestnall 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 Priestnall 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 1.45 per place 355 first choices 245 places 2016/17 1.45 per place 357 first choices 247 places 2017/18 1.43 per place 354 first choices 247 places 2018/19 1.35 per place 337 first choices 250 places 2019/20 1.31 per place 325 first choices 248 places 2020/21 1.32 per place 339 first choices 256 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 287 first choices 249 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 255 first choices 245 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 249 first choices 256 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 277 first choices 273 places 2025/26 1.16 per place 297 first choices 257 places 2026/27 1.23 per place 311 first choices 252 places
First preferences per place at Priestnall School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 311 first preferences for 252 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Priestnall School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 245 355 237 1.45
2016/17 247 357 241 1.45
2017/18 247 354 235 1.43
2018/19 250 337 245 1.35
2019/20 248 325 241 1.31
2020/21 256 339 247 1.32
2021/22 249 287 231 1.15
2022/23 245 255 237 1.04
2023/24 256 249 238 0.97
2024/25 273 277 257 1.01
2025/26 257 297 237 1.16
2026/27 252 311 247 1.23

Places offered

252

in 2026/27

Named first choice

311

521 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.4%

247 of 311

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 252 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 106133.

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

1,275

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,297

101.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

22

reported as full or beyond

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 Priestnall 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 Priestnall 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 Priestnall School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,232 places 1,207 on roll 2010/11 1,271 places 1,203 on roll 2011/12 1,271 places 1,205 on roll 2012/13 1,271 places 1,205 on roll 2013/14 1,271 places 1,223 on roll 2014/15 1,275 places 1,235 on roll 2015/16 1,275 places 1,247 on roll 2016/17 1,284 places 1,265 on roll 2017/18 1,284 places 1,272 on roll 2018/19 1,284 places 1,265 on roll 2020/21 1,275 places 1,270 on roll 2021/22 1,275 places 1,261 on roll 2022/23 1,275 places 1,267 on roll 2023/24 1,275 places 1,263 on roll 2024/25 1,275 places 1,297 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 SK4 3HP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149936).

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.