School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Byrchall High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 75 families who named The Byrchall High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 250 and 315 put it first.

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

1.26

first choices for every place available

315 first preferences for 250 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Byrchall High School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Byrchall 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

The Byrchall High School turned first-choice families away in 1 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 The Byrchall 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 0.74 per place 139 first choices 189 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 154 first choices 175 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 127 first choices 149 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 163 first choices 176 places 2019/20 0.83 per place 182 first choices 220 places 2020/21 0.77 per place 129 first choices 167 places 2021/22 0.77 per place 127 first choices 166 places 2022/23 0.63 per place 97 first choices 153 places 2023/24 0.77 per place 128 first choices 167 places 2024/25 0.92 per place 236 first choices 256 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 246 first choices 251 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 315 first choices 250 places
First preferences per place at The Byrchall High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 315 first preferences for 250 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Byrchall 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
2015/16 189 139 138 0.74
2016/17 175 154 153 0.88
2017/18 149 127 127 0.85
2018/19 176 163 163 0.93
2019/20 220 182 182 0.83
2020/21 167 129 128 0.77
2021/22 166 127 127 0.77
2022/23 153 97 97 0.63
2023/24 167 128 128 0.77
2024/25 256 236 233 0.92
2025/26 251 246 230 0.98
2026/27 250 315 240 1.26

Places offered

250

in 2026/27

Named first choice

315

721 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.2%

240 of 315

Offers to families outside the council

33%

82 of 250 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

1,064

81.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

235

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 The Byrchall 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 The Byrchall High School reported 235 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 81.9% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Byrchall High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,180 places 1,065 on roll 2013/14 1,180 places 1,008 on roll 2014/15 1,175 places 964 on roll 2015/16 1,175 places 896 on roll 2016/17 1,175 places 879 on roll 2017/18 1,175 places 836 on roll 2018/19 1,175 places 855 on roll 2020/21 1,175 places 972 on roll 2021/22 1,175 places 963 on roll 2022/23 1,175 places 1,003 on roll 2023/24 1,175 places 1,064 on roll 2024/25 1,299 places 1,064 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 WN4 9PQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138699).

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.