School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Stockport School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 75 families who named Stockport School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 255 and 312 put it first.

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

1.22

first choices for every place available

312 first preferences for 255 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Stockport School

There is no published appeal success rate for Stockport 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

Stockport 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 Stockport 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 1.23 per place 281 first choices 229 places 2016/17 1.13 per place 285 first choices 253 places 2017/18 1.02 per place 268 first choices 264 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 263 first choices 238 places 2019/20 1.48 per place 368 first choices 248 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 335 first choices 250 places 2021/22 1.23 per place 327 first choices 266 places 2022/23 1.32 per place 346 first choices 263 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 309 first choices 269 places 2024/25 1.22 per place 336 first choices 275 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 317 first choices 268 places 2026/27 1.22 per place 312 first choices 255 places
First preferences per place at Stockport School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 312 first preferences for 255 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Stockport School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 229 281 221 1.23
2016/17 253 285 244 1.13
2017/18 264 268 244 1.02
2018/19 238 263 218 1.11
2019/20 248 368 236 1.48
2020/21 250 335 234 1.34
2021/22 266 327 252 1.23
2022/23 263 346 249 1.32
2023/24 269 309 251 1.15
2024/25 275 336 259 1.22
2025/26 268 317 248 1.18
2026/27 255 312 237 1.22

Places offered

255

in 2026/27

Named first choice

312

798 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76%

237 of 312

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 255 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

1,260

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,349

107.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

89

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 Stockport 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 Stockport 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 Stockport School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,120 places 953 on roll 2010/11 1,055 places 1,042 on roll 2011/12 1,088 places 1,114 on roll 2012/13 1,144 places 1,149 on roll 2013/14 1,144 places 1,104 on roll 2014/15 1,314 places 1,083 on roll 2015/16 1,314 places 1,102 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,121 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,158 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 1,192 on roll 2020/21 1,260 places 1,252 on roll 2021/22 1,260 places 1,284 on roll 2022/23 1,260 places 1,281 on roll 2023/24 1,260 places 1,314 on roll 2024/25 1,260 places 1,349 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Stockport

Postcode SK2 6BW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 106135).

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.