School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Altrincham College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 10 families who named Altrincham College as their first choice did not get a place: 120 put it first and 110 of them were offered one.

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

10

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

120 first preferences for 190 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Altrincham College

There is no published appeal success rate for Altrincham College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Trafford 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 Trafford, 11.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 147 of 1,313 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 Trafford.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Trafford 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

Altrincham College turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 9 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 Altrincham College, 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 0.83 per place 156 first choices 188 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 170 first choices 169 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 162 first choices 175 places 2018/19 0.62 per place 115 first choices 185 places 2019/20 0.68 per place 119 first choices 174 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 135 first choices 173 places 2021/22 0.52 per place 87 first choices 167 places 2022/23 0.68 per place 119 first choices 175 places 2023/24 0.68 per place 123 first choices 180 places 2024/25 0.57 per place 103 first choices 182 places 2025/26 0.49 per place 92 first choices 186 places 2026/27 0.63 per place 120 first choices 190 places
First preferences per place at Altrincham College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 120 first preferences for 190 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Altrincham College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 188 156 107 0.83
2016/17 169 170 140 1.01
2017/18 175 162 105 0.93
2018/19 185 115 112 0.62
2019/20 174 119 92 0.68
2020/21 173 135 104 0.78
2021/22 167 87 65 0.52
2022/23 175 119 79 0.68
2023/24 180 123 62 0.68
2024/25 182 103 75 0.57
2025/26 186 92 68 0.49
2026/27 190 120 110 0.63

Places offered

190

in 2026/27

Named first choice

120

1,080 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.7%

110 of 120

Offers to families outside the council

16%

30 of 190 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Altrincham College 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.

Oversubscription criteria for Altrincham College, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Children in care and Previously Children in care (as defined by the over-subscription criteria outlined in Section A of this policy) who fulfil the entry requirements.
2 All other external Year 11 students who fulfil the entry requirements. For each of the criteria listed above, if the demand for places exceeds the admissions number, the rank order will be determined by a selection process which will give priority to students with the highest GCSE or equivalent grades in the subjects selected for study. If any applicant has the same grade profile as another applicant, the determination factor will be the D R AF T proximity of the student’s home to the school, measured by a straight line (as defined in Altrincham College Admissions Policy Section A). […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Places are available
4 The student has met the sixth form entry requirements. Sixth Form Admissions Process for students in Year 11 during 2025-26:
5 October 2025 – Prospectus available online
6 October 2025 – Post-16 Information Evening
7 December 2025 – Deadline for applications. The exact date will be available on the school website. An acknowledgement of the application and conditional offer if appropriate will be received within 10 working days of its submission. Having registered, student places will be allocated subject to their GCSE results meeting the entry requirements. In the case of insufficient demand from students, the school may decide not to deliver a particular course. If this should happen, students will be informed and given the opportunity to choose an alternative. All students will receive final confirmation of their place at Altrincham College Sixth Form following the GCSE results in August. […] criterion continues in the source document
8 Case for the school made by the Presenting Officer. Written details will have been provided in advance.
9 Questioning of this case by the parents (for information and/or clarification). Questioning of the case by the independent members of the Panel.
10 Case for the parents.
11 Questioning by the school (for information and/or clarification). Questioning of the case by the independent members of the Panel.
12 Summing up by the school.
13 Summing up by the parents. SECTION F: Governing Body Terms of Reference in relation to Admissions
14 To consult with governing bodies of local schools, relevant parents and other interested groups, if there is a change in admission arrangements that will apply for admission applications the following school year and, at least once every seven years even if there are no changes.
15 To approve the admission number (PAN) for each relevant year group, taking regard of net formula capacity. D R AF T
16 To review admission arrangements and determine the arrangements for the school in the following year.
17 To review discussions and outcomes from local admissions forums.
18 To review admissions appeals on consideration of a report to the full governing body.

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.

Altrincham College's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. . 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

956

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

873

91.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

83

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

161

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 Altrincham College 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 Altrincham College reported 83 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.3% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Altrincham College from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,018 places 890 on roll 2013/14 1,085 places 929 on roll 2014/15 1,085 places 942 on roll 2015/16 1,085 places 943 on roll 2016/17 1,085 places 934 on roll 2017/18 1,085 places 942 on roll 2018/19 1,085 places 942 on roll 2020/21 1,085 places 996 on roll 2021/22 1,117 places 998 on roll 2022/23 1,117 places 996 on roll 2023/24 1,117 places 980 on roll 2024/25 1,117 places 976 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
Trafford

Postcode WA15 8QW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138614).

Other contested secondary schools in Trafford

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.