School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Urmston Grammar Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 122 families who named Urmston Grammar Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 169 and 237 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

237 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Urmston Grammar Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Urmston Grammar Academy, 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

Urmston Grammar Academy 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 Urmston Grammar Academy, 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 1.92 per place 294 first choices 153 places 2016/17 1.79 per place 284 first choices 159 places 2017/18 1.97 per place 321 first choices 163 places 2018/19 1.78 per place 273 first choices 153 places 2019/20 1.45 per place 218 first choices 150 places 2020/21 2.18 per place 336 first choices 154 places 2021/22 2.46 per place 371 first choices 151 places 2022/23 1.35 per place 242 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 199 first choices 152 places 2024/25 1.47 per place 241 first choices 164 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 216 first choices 169 places 2026/27 1.4 per place 237 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at Urmston Grammar Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 237 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Urmston Grammar Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 153 294 131 1.92
2016/17 159 284 145 1.79
2017/18 163 321 133 1.97
2018/19 153 273 133 1.78
2019/20 150 218 110 1.45
2020/21 154 336 140 2.18
2021/22 151 371 129 2.46
2022/23 179 242 137 1.35
2023/24 152 199 99 1.31
2024/25 164 241 121 1.47
2025/26 169 216 122 1.28
2026/27 169 237 115 1.4

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

237

1,116 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

48.5%

115 of 237

Offers to families outside the council

42%

71 of 169 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

752

100.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

363

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 Urmston Grammar Academy 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 Urmston Grammar Academy 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Urmston Grammar Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 890 places 902 on roll 2011/12 1,044 places 928 on roll 2012/13 1,061 places 939 on roll 2013/14 1,074 places 881 on roll 2014/15 1,167 places 922 on roll 2015/16 1,191 places 969 on roll 2016/17 1,194 places 955 on roll 2017/18 1,074 places 1,032 on roll 2018/19 1,097 places 1,079 on roll 2020/21 1,097 places 1,058 on roll 2021/22 1,097 places 1,114 on roll 2022/23 1,097 places 1,100 on roll 2023/24 1,101 places 1,101 on roll 2024/25 1,113 places 1,124 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. Urmston Grammar Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Urmston Grammar Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
22 September 2022 Arrangements did not comply ADA3931

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 M41 5UG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136297).

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.