School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Oldershaw School?

In 2026/27, The Oldershaw School offered 102 places and 82 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.80

first choices for every place available

82 first preferences for 102 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Oldershaw School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Oldershaw 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

The Oldershaw School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Oldershaw 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 0.77 per place 64 first choices 83 places 2016/17 0.77 per place 73 first choices 95 places 2017/18 0.8 per place 95 first choices 119 places 2018/19 0.8 per place 118 first choices 147 places 2019/20 1.05 per place 166 first choices 158 places 2020/21 0.82 per place 134 first choices 163 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 180 first choices 157 places 2022/23 1.44 per place 228 first choices 158 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 183 first choices 159 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 158 first choices 160 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 161 first choices 158 places 2026/27 0.8 per place 82 first choices 102 places
First preferences per place at The Oldershaw School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 82 first preferences for 102 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Oldershaw 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 83 64 64 0.77
2016/17 95 73 73 0.77
2017/18 119 95 95 0.8
2018/19 147 118 118 0.8
2019/20 158 166 155 1.05
2020/21 163 134 133 0.82
2021/22 157 180 152 1.15
2022/23 158 228 156 1.44
2023/24 159 183 156 1.15
2024/25 160 158 158 0.99
2025/26 158 161 157 1.02
2026/27 102 82 82 0.8

Places offered

102

in 2026/27

Named first choice

82

186 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

82 of 82

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 85 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

1,111

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

826

74.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

285

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 Oldershaw 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 Oldershaw School reported 285 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 74.3% 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 The Oldershaw School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,090 places 731 on roll 2012/13 1,090 places 681 on roll 2013/14 1,090 places 657 on roll 2014/15 1,082 places 625 on roll 2015/16 1,081 places 591 on roll 2016/17 1,094 places 599 on roll 2017/18 1,005 places 712 on roll 2018/19 1,111 places 803 on roll 2020/21 1,111 places 873 on roll 2021/22 1,111 places 901 on roll 2022/23 1,111 places 924 on roll 2023/24 1,111 places 891 on roll 2024/25 1,111 places 826 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 CH45 4RJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136895).

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.