School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Culcheth High School?

In 2026/27, Culcheth High School offered 198 places and 190 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.96

first choices for every place available

190 first preferences for 198 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Culcheth High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Culcheth 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 Warrington 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 Warrington, 28.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 88 of 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 Warrington.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Warrington 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

Culcheth High School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Culcheth 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 1.19 per place 271 first choices 227 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 250 first choices 230 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 267 first choices 229 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 269 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.05 per place 251 first choices 238 places 2020/21 1.02 per place 243 first choices 239 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 238 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.16 per place 277 first choices 239 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 264 first choices 237 places 2024/25 1 per place 237 first choices 237 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 251 first choices 238 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 190 first choices 198 places
First preferences per place at Culcheth High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 190 first preferences for 198 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Culcheth 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
2015/16 227 271 217 1.19
2016/17 230 250 222 1.09
2017/18 229 267 222 1.17
2018/19 239 269 230 1.13
2019/20 238 251 220 1.05
2020/21 239 243 224 1.02
2021/22 240 238 223 0.99
2022/23 239 277 234 1.16
2023/24 237 264 230 1.11
2024/25 237 237 225 1
2025/26 238 251 231 1.05
2026/27 198 190 190 0.96

Places offered

198

in 2026/27

Named first choice

190

374 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

190 of 190

Offers to families outside the council

27%

53 of 198 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

1,358

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,167

85.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

191

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 Culcheth 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 Culcheth High School reported 191 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85.9% 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 Culcheth High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,293 places 1,171 on roll 2010/11 1,250 places 1,218 on roll 2011/12 1,231 places 1,161 on roll 2012/13 1,274 places 1,144 on roll 2013/14 1,237 places 1,139 on roll 2014/15 1,300 places 1,122 on roll 2015/16 1,300 places 1,109 on roll 2016/17 1,341 places 1,108 on roll 2017/18 1,341 places 1,140 on roll 2018/19 1,296 places 1,164 on roll 2020/21 1,296 places 1,176 on roll 2021/22 1,355 places 1,181 on roll 2022/23 1,355 places 1,183 on roll 2023/24 1,358 places 1,181 on roll 2024/25 1,358 places 1,167 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. Culcheth High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Culcheth High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
16 July 2012 Arrangements did not comply ADA2259

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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Warrington

Postcode WA3 5HH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 111430).

Other contested secondary schools in Warrington

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.