Refused a place at Fairfield High School for Girls?
You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Fairfield High School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: 156 put it first and 155 of them were offered one.
Below: what an appeal in Tameside actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.
first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27
156 first preferences for 196 places, 2026/27
Appealing a refusal at Fairfield High School for Girls
There is no published appeal success rate for Fairfield High School for Girls, 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.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
How contested this school has been
Fairfield High School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 9 of those years. In the other 1 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.
View as a table
| Year | Places | First choices | Offered | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 | 194 | 268 | 193 | 1.38 |
| 2016/17 | 195 | 268 | 189 | 1.37 |
| 2017/18 | 197 | 285 | 192 | 1.45 |
| 2018/19 | 194 | 238 | 182 | 1.23 |
| 2019/20 | 194 | 213 | 176 | 1.1 |
| 2020/21 | 196 | 228 | 184 | 1.16 |
| 2021/22 | 199 | 212 | 180 | 1.07 |
| 2022/23 | 198 | 165 | 158 | 0.83 |
| 2023/24 | 195 | 216 | 182 | 1.11 |
| 2024/25 | 197 | 196 | 170 | 0.99 |
| 2025/26 | 194 | 215 | 173 | 1.11 |
| 2026/27 | 196 | 156 | 155 | 0.8 |
Places offered
196
in 2026/27
Named first choice
156
383 named it at any preference
First choices offered a place
99.4%
155 of 156
Offers to families outside the council
18%
35 of 196 offers
How close you had to live
Fairfield High School for Girls filled its places in 2026, and 9,542m — 5.93 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 5 , which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.
Last place offered at
5.93 mi
9,542 metres, 2026
Under criterion
5
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.
How places were ranked
These are the oversubscription criteria Fairfield High School for Girls published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.
| Rank | Criterion, as the school words it |
|---|---|
| 1 | Looked after children or children who have previously been looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, residence, or special guardianship order. This includes those children who appear to the Admission Authority to have been in state care outside of England, and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted (See Section 1.7 of the Admission Code). |
| 2 | Children and families with exceptional medical or social needs. Written evidence must be provided by a suitably qualified professional – e.g. a GP or consultant for medical needs, or a social worker for social needs – the information must confirm the exceptional medical or social need and demonstrate how Fairfield High School is the only school that can meet the defined needs of the child. The Governing Body will decide as to whether to admit a child under this criterion, using the evidence provided. Parents and carers are responsible for providing all information in support of an application by the closing date. The Governing Body will not ask for additional information. […] criterion continues in the source document |
| 3 | Siblings. This will apply where there are sisters attending the school at the time of application, who will still be attending at the time of admission, i.e. in the September when the pupil is admitted to Year 7. Preference will be given to pupils living nearest to the school. The sibling criterion includes: natural sisters; half-sisters; step sisters; adopted sisters; sisters of fostered children; children of the parent/carer’s partner, and in each case living at the same address. This allows for the admittance of children whose siblings will still be attending Fairfield High School. […] criterion continues in the source document |
| 4 | Children attending partner primary schools in Tameside (*see below for full list). Preference will be given to pupils living nearest to the school. Please note this has changed from children attending Primary Schools in Tameside to comply with recent changes to educational legislation. |
| 5 | All other applications on distance. Preference will be given to pupils living nearest to the school. Distance will also be used as a tie-breaker where oversubscription occurs within any of |
| 6 | to 4. Preference will be given to pupils living nearest to the school. Distance will be measured as a straight line from the child's home address, using the address point assigned by the National Land and Property Gazetteer, to the main gate to the school property. Measurements will be made using the Local Authority's school admissions data mapping software, which uses a Geographical Information System based on Ordnance Survey. The address from which distance will be measured will be the permanent residential address, at the time of application, of the parent with whom the child is normally resident. Where a child lives with parents with shared responsibility, each for part of a week, the |
The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.
Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal
A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.
So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.
These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.
Fairfield High School for Girls's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.
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
1,135
2024/25, whole school
Pupils in them
986
86.9% of capacity
Unfilled places
149
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 Fairfield High School for Girls 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 Fairfield High School for Girls reported 149 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.9% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25
Places Pupils on roll
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. Fairfield High School for Girls has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.
| Determined | Outcome | Determination |
|---|---|---|
| 6 July 2021 | Arrangements did not comply | ADA3768 |
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
- Whether this year's cut-off will be the same. The distance above is last year's and it moves with whoever applies — it is not a boundary you can be measured against in advance, and no council publishes next year's — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
- How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
- Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.
About the school
- Type
- Academy converter
- Admissions policy
- Non-selective
- Religious character
- No religious character
- Entry point
- Year 7
- Council
- Tameside
Postcode M43 6AB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136593).
Other contested secondary schools in Tameside
- Laurus Ryecroft 1.36 first choices per place
- St Thomas More RC College 1.31 first choices per place
- Alder Community High School 1.28 first choices per place
- West Hill School 1.25 first choices per place
- St Damian's RC Science College 1.21 first choices per place
- Mossley Hollins High School 1.16 first choices per place
- Droylsden Academy 1.10 first choices per place
- Hyde High School 0.96 first choices per place
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.