School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Stockport Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Stockport Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 190 put it first and 163 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.

27

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

190 first preferences for 199 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Stockport Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Stockport Academy, 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

Stockport Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Stockport Academy, 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 0.69 per place 119 first choices 173 places 2016/17 0.73 per place 155 first choices 213 places 2017/18 0.77 per place 150 first choices 194 places 2018/19 0.77 per place 151 first choices 197 places 2019/20 0.82 per place 172 first choices 209 places 2020/21 0.85 per place 178 first choices 209 places 2021/22 0.84 per place 175 first choices 209 places 2022/23 0.82 per place 168 first choices 206 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 211 first choices 206 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 213 first choices 215 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 219 first choices 205 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 190 first choices 199 places
First preferences per place at Stockport Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 190 first preferences for 199 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Stockport Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 173 119 118 0.69
2016/17 213 155 155 0.73
2017/18 194 150 149 0.77
2018/19 197 151 150 0.77
2019/20 209 172 170 0.82
2020/21 209 178 167 0.85
2021/22 209 175 160 0.84
2022/23 206 168 165 0.82
2023/24 206 211 167 1.02
2024/25 215 213 167 0.99
2025/26 205 219 173 1.07
2026/27 199 190 163 0.95

Places offered

199

in 2026/27

Named first choice

190

596 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.8%

163 of 190

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 199 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

1,283

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

998

77.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

285

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 Stockport Academy 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 Stockport Academy reported 285 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 77.8% 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 Stockport Academy 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 1,150 places 709 on roll 2010/11 1,150 places 699 on roll 2011/12 1,150 places 690 on roll 2012/13 1,150 places 715 on roll 2013/14 1,150 places 671 on roll 2014/15 1,150 places 673 on roll 2015/16 1,150 places 697 on roll 2016/17 1,146 places 703 on roll 2017/18 1,146 places 761 on roll 2018/19 1,161 places 864 on roll 2020/21 1,020 places 975 on roll 2021/22 1,020 places 990 on roll 2022/23 1,020 places 985 on roll 2023/24 1,020 places 1,006 on roll 2024/25 1,283 places 998 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Stockport

Postcode SK3 0UP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135262).

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.