School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Loreto Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 106 families who named Loreto Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 160 and 258 put it first.

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

1.61

first choices for every place available

258 first preferences for 160 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Loreto Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Loreto Grammar 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 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

Loreto Grammar 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 Loreto Grammar 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 1.35 per place 211 first choices 156 places 2016/17 1.25 per place 202 first choices 162 places 2017/18 1.48 per place 238 first choices 161 places 2018/19 1.37 per place 219 first choices 160 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 204 first choices 161 places 2020/21 1.18 per place 186 first choices 158 places 2021/22 1.67 per place 270 first choices 162 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 180 first choices 150 places 2023/24 1.49 per place 239 first choices 160 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 223 first choices 165 places 2025/26 1.65 per place 263 first choices 159 places 2026/27 1.61 per place 258 first choices 160 places
First preferences per place at Loreto Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 258 first preferences for 160 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Loreto Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 156 211 151 1.35
2016/17 162 202 161 1.25
2017/18 161 238 153 1.48
2018/19 160 219 158 1.37
2019/20 161 204 154 1.27
2020/21 158 186 152 1.18
2021/22 162 270 139 1.67
2022/23 150 180 143 1.2
2023/24 160 239 158 1.49
2024/25 165 223 159 1.35
2025/26 159 263 153 1.65
2026/27 160 258 152 1.61

Places offered

160

in 2026/27

Named first choice

258

441 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

58.9%

152 of 258

Offers to families outside the council

50%

80 of 160 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Loreto Grammar School 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 Loreto Grammar School, 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 Baptised Roman Catholic ‘looked after girls’, Baptised Roman Catholic ‘previously looked after girls’ and International Baptised Roman Catholic ‘looked after girls’.
2 Baptised Roman Catholic girls who have sisters* in the school at the time of admission.
3 Baptised Roman Catholic girls who attended an associated Primary School and live in a nominated Local Pastoral Area.**
4 Other Baptised Roman Catholic girls.
5 Other ‘looked after girls’, ‘previously looked after girls’ and ‘International previously looked after girls’.
6 Baptised girls of other denominations.
7 Other girls. INFORMATION:
a) The Governors’ In Year Entrance Examination schedule is available on the School website. It will consist of closed internal tests English and Mathematics for current Year 7. For Year 8 and 9 there is also a closed internal MFL paper. The MFL task should be completed in the language currently being studied. Please see the school website for further information.
b) All Catholic applicants will be required to produce an original Baptismal Certificate at the time of registration to the In Year Entrance Examination. Eligibility in this category is for those who have been baptised prior to the date of registration to the examination. If baptism takes place after the date of the In Year Entrance Examination, then the category will be updated at the start of the next academic year.
c) Girls of all other baptised denominations will be required to produce an original Baptismal Certificate at the time of registration to the In Year Entrance Examination. Eligibility in this category is for those who have been baptised prior to the date of registration to the examination. If baptism takes place after the date of the In Year Entrance Examination, then the category will be updated at the start of the next academic year.
d) Any Baptismal Certificate submitted, along with all paperwork / requests for Access Arrangements, must be received at school by the closing date for registration to the Entrance Examination.
e) If in any category there are more applications than places available, then priority will be given in the following order: - Those girls who are eligible for Pupil Premium - Those girls who achieved the highest marks in the Entrance Examination. In the event of a tie-break then closest distance from the home address to Loreto will be applied*. Applicants who have previously participated in the in-year assessment test for a place at Loreto Grammar School, and who have not been assessed suitable for a grammar school education, must leave a minimum of twelve months before applying for reassessment. **Nominated Local Pastoral Areas
8 St. Ambrose Deanery (Diocese of Shrewsbury) St. Hugh and St John West Timperley St. Vincent de Paul’s Altrincham All Saints Ashton-on-Mersey St. Margaret Ward Sale St. Joseph’s Sale Holy Angels Hale Barns Our Lady of Lourdes Partington Holy Family Sale Moor Associated Primary Schools St. Hugh’s Catholic Primary School West Timperley St. Vincent’s Catholic Primary School Altrincham All Saints Catholic Primary School Ashton-on-Mersey St. Margaret Ward Catholic Primary School Sale Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary School Partington St. Joseph’s Catholic Primary School Sale Holy Family Catholic Primary School Sale
9 Our Lady’s Deanery (Diocese of Salford) St. Alphonsus Old Trafford St. Ann’s Stretford English Martyrs Urmston St. Hugh of Lincoln Stretford Our Lady and the English Martyrs’ Davyhulme / Urmston St. Monica’s Flixton St. John’s and St Teresa’s Firswood / Chorlton Associated Primary Schools St. Alphonsus RC Primary School Old Trafford St. Ann’s RC Primary School Stretford English Martyrs’ RC Primary School Urmston St. Hugh of Lincoln RC Primary School Stretford Our Lady of the Rosary RC Primary School Davyhulme / Urmston St. Monica’s RC Primary School Flixton St. Teresa’s RC Primary School Firswood St. […] criterion continues in the source document

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.

Loreto Grammar School'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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

788

105.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

38

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

291

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 Loreto Grammar 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 Loreto Grammar 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Loreto Grammar School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,033 places 1,030 on roll 2013/14 1,007 places 1,047 on roll 2014/15 1,046 places 1,033 on roll 2015/16 1,029 places 1,022 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,060 on roll 2017/18 1,070 places 1,042 on roll 2018/19 1,056 places 1,043 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,065 on roll 2021/22 1,061 places 1,071 on roll 2022/23 1,041 places 1,031 on roll 2023/24 1,022 places 1,026 on roll 2024/25 1,041 places 1,072 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
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Trafford

Postcode WA14 4AH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138464).

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.