School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Prenton High School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 5 families who named Prenton High School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: 137 put it first and 132 of them were offered one.

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

5

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

137 first preferences for 147 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Prenton High School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Prenton High School for Girls, 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

Prenton High School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 4 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 Prenton High School for Girls, 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 0.71 per place 112 first choices 158 places 2016/17 0.85 per place 135 first choices 158 places 2017/18 0.81 per place 127 first choices 156 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 148 first choices 158 places 2019/20 0.67 per place 102 first choices 152 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 144 first choices 156 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 156 first choices 158 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 139 first choices 154 places 2023/24 1 per place 156 first choices 156 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 168 first choices 152 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 149 first choices 153 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 137 first choices 147 places
First preferences per place at Prenton High School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 137 first preferences for 147 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Prenton High School for Girls, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 158 112 112 0.71
2016/17 158 135 117 0.85
2017/18 156 127 124 0.81
2018/19 158 148 125 0.94
2019/20 152 102 102 0.67
2020/21 156 144 138 0.92
2021/22 158 156 139 0.99
2022/23 154 139 139 0.9
2023/24 156 156 139 1
2024/25 152 168 139 1.11
2025/26 153 149 143 0.97
2026/27 147 137 132 0.93

Places offered

147

in 2026/27

Named first choice

137

368 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.4%

132 of 137

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 147 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

850

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

776

91.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

74

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 Prenton High School for Girls 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 Prenton High School for Girls reported 74 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.3% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Prenton High School for Girls from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 790 places 732 on roll 2012/13 790 places 725 on roll 2013/14 790 places 740 on roll 2014/15 818 places 739 on roll 2015/16 847 places 747 on roll 2016/17 850 places 749 on roll 2017/18 850 places 771 on roll 2018/19 850 places 780 on roll 2020/21 850 places 791 on roll 2021/22 850 places 779 on roll 2022/23 850 places 779 on roll 2023/24 850 places 773 on roll 2024/25 850 places 776 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 CH42 6RR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137130).

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.