School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wirral Grammar School for Girls?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named Wirral Grammar School for Girls as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 178 and 199 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

199 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wirral Grammar School for Girls

There is no published appeal success rate for Wirral Grammar 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

Wirral Grammar School for Girls turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Wirral Grammar 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 1.14 per place 198 first choices 173 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 148 first choices 149 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 166 first choices 167 places 2018/19 1.02 per place 160 first choices 157 places 2019/20 1.18 per place 211 first choices 179 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 194 first choices 179 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 177 first choices 168 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 175 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1 per place 177 first choices 177 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 199 first choices 180 places 2025/26 1.26 per place 226 first choices 179 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 199 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at Wirral Grammar School for Girls. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wirral Grammar 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
2015/16 173 198 170 1.14
2016/17 149 148 146 0.99
2017/18 167 166 166 0.99
2018/19 157 160 153 1.02
2019/20 179 211 175 1.18
2020/21 179 194 177 1.08
2021/22 168 177 165 1.05
2022/23 179 175 169 0.98
2023/24 177 177 173 1
2024/25 180 199 175 1.11
2025/26 179 226 177 1.26
2026/27 178 199 177 1.12

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

390 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.9%

177 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

24%

43 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

885

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

919

103.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

34

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

320

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 Wirral Grammar 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 Wirral Grammar School for Girls 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 Wirral Grammar School for Girls from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,147 places 1,098 on roll 2012/13 1,195 places 1,115 on roll 2013/14 1,180 places 1,130 on roll 2014/15 1,208 places 1,161 on roll 2015/16 1,192 places 1,166 on roll 2016/17 1,205 places 1,177 on roll 2017/18 1,215 places 1,186 on roll 2018/19 1,208 places 1,183 on roll 2020/21 1,205 places 1,193 on roll 2021/22 1,205 places 1,196 on roll 2022/23 1,205 places 1,192 on roll 2023/24 1,205 places 1,185 on roll 2024/25 1,205 places 1,194 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wirral

Postcode CH63 3AF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137171).

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.