School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sale High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 49 families who named Sale High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 212 and 227 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

227 first preferences for 212 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sale High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sale High 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

Sale High School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 4 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 Sale High 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 0.4 per place 58 first choices 144 places 2016/17 0.55 per place 79 first choices 143 places 2017/18 0.48 per place 98 first choices 205 places 2018/19 0.53 per place 114 first choices 214 places 2019/20 0.56 per place 104 first choices 186 places 2020/21 0.67 per place 141 first choices 210 places 2021/22 0.67 per place 136 first choices 203 places 2022/23 0.72 per place 146 first choices 204 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 182 first choices 240 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 195 first choices 200 places 2025/26 1.19 per place 237 first choices 200 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 227 first choices 212 places
First preferences per place at Sale High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 227 first preferences for 212 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sale High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 144 58 58 0.4
2016/17 143 79 79 0.55
2017/18 205 98 98 0.48
2018/19 214 114 114 0.53
2019/20 186 104 104 0.56
2020/21 210 141 132 0.67
2021/22 203 136 115 0.67
2022/23 204 146 115 0.72
2023/24 240 182 124 0.76
2024/25 200 195 140 0.97
2025/26 200 237 163 1.19
2026/27 212 227 178 1.07

Places offered

212

in 2026/27

Named first choice

227

980 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.4%

178 of 227

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 212 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 106375.

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

1,155

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,067

92.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

88

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 Sale High 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 Sale High School reported 88 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 92.4% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sale High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,145 places 836 on roll 2010/11 1,105 places 790 on roll 2011/12 1,105 places 773 on roll 2012/13 1,105 places 702 on roll 2013/14 1,105 places 633 on roll 2014/15 990 places 584 on roll 2015/16 990 places 582 on roll 2016/17 1,022 places 623 on roll 2017/18 1,022 places 704 on roll 2018/19 1,022 places 769 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 932 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,009 on roll 2022/23 1,055 places 1,015 on roll 2023/24 1,155 places 1,054 on roll 2024/25 1,155 places 1,067 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. Sale High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Sale High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
23 September 2024 Arrangements did not comply ADA4303

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
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Trafford

Postcode M33 3JR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 151895).

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.