School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Upton Hall School FCJ?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 13 families who named Upton Hall School FCJ as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 156 and 166 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

166 first preferences for 156 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Upton Hall School FCJ

There is no published appeal success rate for Upton Hall School FCJ, 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

Upton Hall School FCJ turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Upton Hall School FCJ, 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 0.98 per place 144 first choices 147 places 2016/17 1.09 per place 152 first choices 139 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 133 first choices 132 places 2018/19 1 per place 157 first choices 157 places 2019/20 1.18 per place 187 first choices 159 places 2020/21 1.09 per place 174 first choices 159 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 148 first choices 145 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 161 first choices 153 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 155 first choices 154 places 2024/25 1.3 per place 201 first choices 155 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 164 first choices 153 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 166 first choices 156 places
First preferences per place at Upton Hall School FCJ. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 166 first preferences for 156 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Upton Hall School FCJ, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 147 144 144 0.98
2016/17 139 152 139 1.09
2017/18 132 133 132 1.01
2018/19 157 157 157 1
2019/20 159 187 153 1.18
2020/21 159 174 157 1.09
2021/22 145 148 143 1.02
2022/23 153 161 149 1.05
2023/24 154 155 153 1.01
2024/25 155 201 153 1.3
2025/26 153 164 148 1.07
2026/27 156 166 153 1.06

Places offered

156

in 2026/27

Named first choice

166

306 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.2%

153 of 166

Offers to families outside the council

11%

17 of 156 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

730

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

782

107.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

52

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Upton Hall School FCJ 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 Upton Hall School FCJ 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Upton Hall School FCJ 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 2011/12 947 places 965 on roll 2012/13 947 places 986 on roll 2013/14 1,042 places 989 on roll 2014/15 1,045 places 976 on roll 2015/16 1,045 places 950 on roll 2016/17 1,045 places 964 on roll 2017/18 1,045 places 971 on roll 2018/19 1,120 places 969 on roll 2020/21 1,030 places 987 on roll 2021/22 1,030 places 986 on roll 2022/23 1,030 places 1,011 on roll 2023/24 1,030 places 1,005 on roll 2024/25 1,030 places 1,007 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
Selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wirral

Postcode CH49 6LJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137929).

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.