School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Fred Longworth High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named Fred Longworth High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 259 and 284 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

284 first preferences for 259 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Fred Longworth High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Fred Longworth 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 Wigan 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 Wigan, 18.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 99 of 538 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 Wigan.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wigan 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

Fred Longworth High School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Fred Longworth 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 1.07 per place 285 first choices 267 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 306 first choices 269 places 2017/18 1.31 per place 348 first choices 265 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 301 first choices 253 places 2019/20 1.44 per place 364 first choices 253 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 304 first choices 246 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 303 first choices 251 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 331 first choices 267 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 306 first choices 265 places 2024/25 1 per place 257 first choices 257 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 319 first choices 245 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 284 first choices 259 places
First preferences per place at Fred Longworth High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 284 first preferences for 259 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Fred Longworth 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
2015/16 267 285 254 1.07
2016/17 269 306 263 1.14
2017/18 265 348 264 1.31
2018/19 253 301 252 1.19
2019/20 253 364 253 1.44
2020/21 246 304 246 1.24
2021/22 251 303 247 1.21
2022/23 267 331 258 1.24
2023/24 265 306 264 1.15
2024/25 257 257 250 1
2025/26 245 319 245 1.3
2026/27 259 284 253 1.1

Places offered

259

in 2026/27

Named first choice

284

526 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.1%

253 of 284

Offers to families outside the council

2%

6 of 259 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

1,324

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,283

96.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

41

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 Fred Longworth 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 Fred Longworth High School reported 41 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Fred Longworth High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,275 places 1,282 on roll 2012/13 1,275 places 1,274 on roll 2013/14 1,275 places 1,255 on roll 2014/15 1,275 places 1,280 on roll 2015/16 1,275 places 1,271 on roll 2016/17 1,275 places 1,285 on roll 2017/18 1,275 places 1,305 on roll 2018/19 1,275 places 1,295 on roll 2020/21 1,275 places 1,280 on roll 2021/22 1,275 places 1,274 on roll 2022/23 1,275 places 1,279 on roll 2023/24 1,275 places 1,282 on roll 2024/25 1,324 places 1,283 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wigan

Postcode M29 8JN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137448).

Other contested secondary schools in Wigan

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.