School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hilbre High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Hilbre High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 178 and 181 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

181 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hilbre High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hilbre 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 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

Hilbre High School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Hilbre 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 1.16 per place 202 first choices 174 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 158 first choices 173 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 224 first choices 193 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 209 first choices 189 places 2019/20 0.85 per place 161 first choices 189 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 174 first choices 193 places 2021/22 1.27 per place 232 first choices 182 places 2022/23 1 per place 192 first choices 192 places 2023/24 1.2 per place 251 first choices 210 places 2024/25 1.2 per place 228 first choices 190 places 2025/26 1.16 per place 205 first choices 176 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 181 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at Hilbre High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 181 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hilbre 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
2015/16 174 202 154 1.16
2016/17 173 158 140 0.91
2017/18 193 224 170 1.16
2018/19 189 209 164 1.11
2019/20 189 161 148 0.85
2020/21 193 174 164 0.9
2021/22 182 232 159 1.27
2022/23 192 192 151 1
2023/24 210 251 194 1.2
2024/25 190 228 180 1.2
2025/26 176 205 162 1.16
2026/27 178 181 166 1.02

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

181

578 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.7%

166 of 181

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 178 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

947

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

993

104.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

46

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

239

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 Hilbre 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 Hilbre High School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hilbre High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,039 places 997 on roll 2013/14 1,048 places 1,019 on roll 2014/15 1,048 places 1,059 on roll 2015/16 1,091 places 1,042 on roll 2016/17 1,188 places 1,040 on roll 2017/18 1,198 places 1,118 on roll 2018/19 1,196 places 1,102 on roll 2020/21 1,186 places 1,153 on roll 2021/22 1,186 places 1,156 on roll 2022/23 1,186 places 1,177 on roll 2023/24 1,186 places 1,191 on roll 2024/25 1,186 places 1,153 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
Wirral

Postcode CH48 6EQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138355).

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.