School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Shevington High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 26 families who named Shevington High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 169 and 183 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

183 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Shevington High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Shevington 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

Shevington High School turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Shevington 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 0.81 per place 114 first choices 140 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 130 first choices 134 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 148 first choices 155 places 2018/19 0.76 per place 93 first choices 123 places 2019/20 0.76 per place 131 first choices 172 places 2020/21 0.71 per place 112 first choices 157 places 2021/22 0.88 per place 150 first choices 171 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 160 first choices 176 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 202 first choices 174 places 2024/25 0.88 per place 152 first choices 173 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 175 first choices 171 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 183 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at Shevington High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 183 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Shevington 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
2015/16 140 114 114 0.81
2016/17 134 130 127 0.97
2017/18 155 148 145 0.95
2018/19 123 93 92 0.76
2019/20 172 131 131 0.76
2020/21 157 112 111 0.71
2021/22 171 150 150 0.88
2022/23 176 160 149 0.91
2023/24 174 202 164 1.16
2024/25 173 152 149 0.88
2025/26 171 175 149 1.02
2026/27 169 183 157 1.08

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

183

584 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.8%

157 of 183

Offers to families outside the council

7%

11 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

1,027

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

878

85.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

149

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 Shevington 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 Shevington High School reported 149 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85.5% 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 Shevington High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 890 places 709 on roll 2010/11 890 places 723 on roll 2011/12 890 places 711 on roll 2012/13 890 places 647 on roll 2013/14 890 places 574 on roll 2014/15 870 places 590 on roll 2015/16 870 places 602 on roll 2016/17 870 places 632 on roll 2017/18 953 places 666 on roll 2018/19 953 places 681 on roll 2020/21 953 places 803 on roll 2021/22 953 places 822 on roll 2022/23 953 places 847 on roll 2023/24 953 places 878 on roll 2024/25 1,027 places 878 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wigan

Postcode WN6 8AB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 106529).

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.