School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Stretford Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 144 families who named Stretford Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 170 and 263 put it first.

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

1.55

first choices for every place available

263 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Stretford Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Stretford 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

Stretford 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 Stretford Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 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 2.33 per place 287 first choices 123 places 2016/17 1.98 per place 307 first choices 155 places 2017/18 1.28 per place 168 first choices 131 places 2018/19 1.38 per place 231 first choices 168 places 2019/20 1.7 per place 290 first choices 171 places 2020/21 1.74 per place 301 first choices 173 places 2021/22 1.98 per place 339 first choices 171 places 2022/23 1.74 per place 301 first choices 173 places 2023/24 1.73 per place 299 first choices 173 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 223 first choices 174 places 2025/26 1.92 per place 333 first choices 173 places 2026/27 1.55 per place 263 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at Stretford Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 263 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Stretford 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
2015/16 123 287 99 2.33
2016/17 155 307 134 1.98
2017/18 131 168 90 1.28
2018/19 168 231 111 1.38
2019/20 171 290 122 1.7
2020/21 173 301 138 1.74
2021/22 171 339 96 1.98
2022/23 173 301 147 1.74
2023/24 173 299 132 1.73
2024/25 174 223 104 1.28
2025/26 173 333 135 1.92
2026/27 170 263 119 1.55

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

263

1,236 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

45.2%

119 of 263

Offers to families outside the council

54%

92 of 170 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

790

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

800

101.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

194

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 Stretford 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 Stretford 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Stretford Grammar School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 845 places 752 on roll 2010/11 840 places 756 on roll 2011/12 861 places 790 on roll 2012/13 861 places 791 on roll 2013/14 861 places 789 on roll 2014/15 854 places 812 on roll 2015/16 842 places 770 on roll 2016/17 864 places 796 on roll 2017/18 815 places 819 on roll 2018/19 829 places 832 on roll 2020/21 846 places 855 on roll 2021/22 969 places 888 on roll 2022/23 969 places 949 on roll 2023/24 984 places 942 on roll 2024/25 984 places 945 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. Stretford Grammar School has been the subject of 3 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Stretford Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
11 October 2021 Arrangements did not comply ADA3778
27 July 2021 No fault found VAR2160
20 August 2019 No fault found ADA3540

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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Trafford

Postcode M32 8JB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 106368).

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.