School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 88 families who named Altrincham Grammar School for Boys as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 215 and 302 put it first.

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

1.40

first choices for every place available

302 first preferences for 215 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys

There is no published appeal success rate for Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, 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 Grammar School for Boys 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 Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.32 per place 308 first choices 234 places 2016/17 1.26 per place 283 first choices 224 places 2017/18 1.51 per place 292 first choices 193 places 2018/19 1.56 per place 305 first choices 195 places 2019/20 1.52 per place 302 first choices 199 places 2020/21 1.45 per place 312 first choices 215 places 2021/22 2.38 per place 512 first choices 215 places 2022/23 1.26 per place 269 first choices 214 places 2023/24 1.35 per place 294 first choices 218 places 2024/25 1.39 per place 305 first choices 219 places 2025/26 1.47 per place 320 first choices 217 places 2026/27 1.4 per place 302 first choices 215 places
First preferences per place at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 302 first preferences for 215 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 234 308 229 1.32
2016/17 224 283 224 1.26
2017/18 193 292 191 1.51
2018/19 195 305 193 1.56
2019/20 199 302 198 1.52
2020/21 215 312 213 1.45
2021/22 215 512 211 2.38
2022/23 214 269 214 1.26
2023/24 218 294 216 1.35
2024/25 219 305 217 1.39
2025/26 217 320 216 1.47
2026/27 215 302 214 1.4

Places offered

215

in 2026/27

Named first choice

302

498 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.9%

214 of 302

Offers to families outside the council

10%

21 of 215 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

1,109

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,029

92.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

80

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

452

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 Grammar School for Boys 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 Grammar School for Boys reported 80 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.8% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,231 places 1,231 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,252 on roll 2012/13 1,277 places 1,250 on roll 2013/14 1,360 places 1,255 on roll 2014/15 1,273 places 1,234 on roll 2015/16 1,273 places 1,283 on roll 2016/17 1,273 places 1,278 on roll 2017/18 1,273 places 1,274 on roll 2018/19 1,273 places 1,286 on roll 2020/21 1,561 places 1,316 on roll 2021/22 1,561 places 1,338 on roll 2022/23 1,561 places 1,352 on roll 2023/24 1,561 places 1,392 on roll 2024/25 1,561 places 1,419 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.

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. Altrincham Grammar School for Boys has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Altrincham Grammar School for Boys. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
26 June 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2581 and ADA2621

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

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Trafford

Postcode WA14 2RS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136458).

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.