School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Alder Community High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 52 families who named Alder Community High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 172 and 221 put it first.

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

1.28

first choices for every place available

221 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Alder Community High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Alder Community High 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 Tameside 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 Tameside, 12.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 82 of 635 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 Tameside.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Tameside 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

Alder Community High 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 Alder Community High 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 1.3 per place 202 first choices 155 places 2016/17 1.32 per place 203 first choices 154 places 2017/18 1.41 per place 218 first choices 155 places 2018/19 1.26 per place 226 first choices 180 places 2019/20 1.36 per place 245 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.36 per place 242 first choices 178 places 2021/22 1.2 per place 247 first choices 206 places 2022/23 1.46 per place 252 first choices 173 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 245 first choices 177 places 2024/25 1.31 per place 230 first choices 175 places 2025/26 1.25 per place 213 first choices 170 places 2026/27 1.28 per place 221 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at Alder Community High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 221 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Alder Community High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 155 202 154 1.3
2016/17 154 203 151 1.32
2017/18 155 218 149 1.41
2018/19 180 226 173 1.26
2019/20 180 245 175 1.36
2020/21 178 242 176 1.36
2021/22 206 247 205 1.2
2022/23 173 252 171 1.46
2023/24 177 245 177 1.38
2024/25 175 230 169 1.31
2025/26 170 213 164 1.25
2026/27 172 221 169 1.28

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

221

410 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.5%

169 of 221

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 172 offers

How close you had to live

Alder Community High School filled its places in 2026, and 2,055m — 1.28 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 4 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

1.28 mi

2,055 metres, 2026

Under criterion

4

as numbered by the school

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Tameside Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,039

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

921

88.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

118

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 Alder Community High 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 Alder Community High School reported 118 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.6% 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 Alder Community High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 750 places 783 on roll 2010/11 750 places 775 on roll 2011/12 750 places 778 on roll 2012/13 750 places 737 on roll 2013/14 750 places 743 on roll 2014/15 750 places 751 on roll 2015/16 750 places 751 on roll 2016/17 750 places 769 on roll 2017/18 764 places 768 on roll 2018/19 794 places 806 on roll 2020/21 899 places 862 on roll 2021/22 899 places 905 on roll 2022/23 899 places 931 on roll 2023/24 899 places 924 on roll 2024/25 1,039 places 921 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
Tameside

Postcode SK14 5NJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 134283).

Other contested secondary schools in Tameside

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.