School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at North Cestrian School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named North Cestrian School as their first choice did not get a place: 112 put it first and 89 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Trafford actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

23

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

112 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at North Cestrian School

There is no published appeal success rate for North Cestrian 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

North Cestrian School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 7 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 North Cestrian School, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.69 per place 80 first choices 116 places 2017/18 0.74 per place 101 first choices 137 places 2018/19 0.57 per place 89 first choices 155 places 2019/20 0.48 per place 72 first choices 150 places 2020/21 0.63 per place 95 first choices 150 places 2021/22 0.43 per place 63 first choices 148 places 2022/23 0.79 per place 132 first choices 168 places 2023/24 1.03 per place 175 first choices 170 places 2024/25 0.92 per place 156 first choices 170 places 2025/26 0.89 per place 156 first choices 176 places 2026/27 0.64 per place 112 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at North Cestrian School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 112 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at North Cestrian School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 116 80 78 0.69
2017/18 137 101 78 0.74
2018/19 155 89 86 0.57
2019/20 150 72 70 0.48
2020/21 150 95 80 0.63
2021/22 148 63 44 0.43
2022/23 168 132 85 0.79
2023/24 170 175 114 1.03
2024/25 170 156 110 0.92
2025/26 176 156 104 0.89
2026/27 175 112 89 0.64

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

112

1,047 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.5%

89 of 112

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 175 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 106380.

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

727

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

782

107.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

55

reported as full or beyond

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 North Cestrian 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 North Cestrian 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at North Cestrian School from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 656 places 385 on roll 2017/18 582 places 425 on roll 2018/19 582 places 513 on roll 2020/21 688 places 676 on roll 2021/22 650 places 725 on roll 2022/23 700 places 755 on roll 2023/24 727 places 784 on roll 2024/25 727 places 782 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Trafford

Postcode WA14 4AJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143104).

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.