School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Golborne High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 45 families who named Golborne High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 236 and 279 put it first.

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

1.18

first choices for every place available

279 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Golborne High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Golborne 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

Golborne High School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Golborne 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 1.09 per place 183 first choices 168 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 168 first choices 178 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 174 first choices 177 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 227 first choices 204 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 257 first choices 227 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 270 first choices 225 places 2021/22 1.32 per place 297 first choices 225 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 285 first choices 241 places 2023/24 1.24 per place 278 first choices 224 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 291 first choices 225 places 2025/26 1.27 per place 278 first choices 219 places 2026/27 1.18 per place 279 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at Golborne High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 279 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Golborne 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
2015/16 168 183 158 1.09
2016/17 178 168 168 0.94
2017/18 177 174 174 0.98
2018/19 204 227 203 1.11
2019/20 227 257 225 1.13
2020/21 225 270 223 1.2
2021/22 225 297 222 1.32
2022/23 241 285 239 1.18
2023/24 224 278 222 1.24
2024/25 225 291 225 1.29
2025/26 219 278 219 1.27
2026/27 236 279 234 1.18

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

279

446 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.9%

234 of 279

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 236 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

1,299

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,142

87.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

157

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 Golborne 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 Golborne High School reported 157 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.9% 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 Golborne High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 855 places 790 on roll 2010/11 855 places 788 on roll 2011/12 855 places 805 on roll 2012/13 855 places 786 on roll 2013/14 855 places 789 on roll 2014/15 855 places 804 on roll 2015/16 855 places 829 on roll 2016/17 855 places 833 on roll 2017/18 909 places 850 on roll 2018/19 909 places 906 on roll 2020/21 909 places 1,004 on roll 2021/22 1,114 places 1,068 on roll 2022/23 1,125 places 1,118 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,139 on roll 2024/25 1,299 places 1,142 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. Golborne High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Golborne High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
14 August 2019 Arrangements did not comply ADA3593

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

Postcode WA3 3EL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 106525).

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.