School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Standish Community High School?

In 2026/27, Standish Community High School offered 240 places and 215 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.90

first choices for every place available

215 first preferences for 240 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Standish Community High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Standish Community 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

Standish Community High School turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Standish Community 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 1.1 per place 272 first choices 247 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 225 first choices 230 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 236 first choices 240 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 315 first choices 259 places 2019/20 1.22 per place 313 first choices 257 places 2020/21 1.22 per place 317 first choices 259 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 285 first choices 253 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 287 first choices 259 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 237 first choices 255 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 284 first choices 257 places 2025/26 0.92 per place 233 first choices 252 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 215 first choices 240 places
First preferences per place at Standish Community High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 215 first preferences for 240 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Standish Community 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
2015/16 247 272 245 1.1
2016/17 230 225 224 0.98
2017/18 240 236 235 0.98
2018/19 259 315 259 1.22
2019/20 257 313 250 1.22
2020/21 259 317 253 1.22
2021/22 253 285 248 1.13
2022/23 259 287 253 1.11
2023/24 255 237 233 0.93
2024/25 257 284 249 1.11
2025/26 252 233 233 0.92
2026/27 240 215 215 0.9

Places offered

240

in 2026/27

Named first choice

215

485 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

215 of 215

Offers to families outside the council

5%

11 of 238 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 106531.

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

1,300

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,292

99.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

8

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 Standish Community 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 Standish Community High School reported 8 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.4% 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 Standish Community 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 1,250 places 1,243 on roll 2010/11 1,250 places 1,239 on roll 2011/12 1,250 places 1,246 on roll 2012/13 1,250 places 1,229 on roll 2013/14 1,250 places 1,208 on roll 2014/15 1,250 places 1,217 on roll 2015/16 1,250 places 1,215 on roll 2016/17 1,250 places 1,207 on roll 2017/18 1,300 places 1,236 on roll 2018/19 1,300 places 1,276 on roll 2020/21 1,300 places 1,279 on roll 2021/22 1,300 places 1,280 on roll 2022/23 1,300 places 1,289 on roll 2023/24 1,300 places 1,296 on roll 2024/25 1,300 places 1,292 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. Standish Community High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Standish Community High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
5 December 2024 Arrangements did not comply ADA4383

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

Postcode WN6 0NX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143812).

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.