School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Birkenhead High School Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 52 families who named Birkenhead High School Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 116 and 163 put it first.

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

1.41

first choices for every place available

163 first preferences for 116 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Birkenhead High School Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Birkenhead High School Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Wirral 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 Wirral, 26.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 338 of 1,293 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 Wirral.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wirral 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

Birkenhead High School Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Birkenhead High School Academy, 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 1.97 per place 213 first choices 108 places 2016/17 1.63 per place 178 first choices 109 places 2017/18 1.58 per place 167 first choices 106 places 2018/19 1.28 per place 170 first choices 133 places 2019/20 1.63 per place 219 first choices 134 places 2020/21 1.34 per place 180 first choices 134 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 176 first choices 131 places 2022/23 1.21 per place 158 first choices 131 places 2023/24 1.29 per place 167 first choices 129 places 2024/25 1.31 per place 170 first choices 130 places 2025/26 1.37 per place 167 first choices 122 places 2026/27 1.41 per place 163 first choices 116 places
First preferences per place at Birkenhead High School Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 163 first preferences for 116 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Birkenhead High School Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 108 213 101 1.97
2016/17 109 178 103 1.63
2017/18 106 167 103 1.58
2018/19 133 170 125 1.28
2019/20 134 219 126 1.63
2020/21 134 180 126 1.34
2021/22 131 176 123 1.34
2022/23 131 158 120 1.21
2023/24 129 167 116 1.29
2024/25 130 170 114 1.31
2025/26 122 167 117 1.37
2026/27 116 163 111 1.41

Places offered

116

in 2026/27

Named first choice

163

547 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

68.1%

111 of 163

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 116 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

1,116

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,065

95.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

51

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Birkenhead High School Academy 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 Birkenhead High School Academy reported 51 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.4% 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 Birkenhead High School Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 998 places 744 on roll 2010/11 998 places 794 on roll 2011/12 1,209 places 808 on roll 2012/13 1,252 places 830 on roll 2013/14 1,236 places 945 on roll 2014/15 1,236 places 993 on roll 2015/16 1,292 places 1,066 on roll 2016/17 1,317 places 1,059 on roll 2017/18 1,323 places 1,081 on roll 2018/19 1,316 places 1,110 on roll 2020/21 1,316 places 1,156 on roll 2021/22 1,316 places 1,174 on roll 2022/23 1,316 places 1,188 on roll 2023/24 1,316 places 1,169 on roll 2024/25 1,316 places 1,180 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wirral

Postcode CH43 1TY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135877).

Other contested secondary schools in Wirral

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.