School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Woodchurch High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Woodchurch High School as their first choice did not get a place: 247 put it first and 236 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.

11

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

247 first preferences for 253 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Woodchurch High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Woodchurch 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

Woodchurch High School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Woodchurch 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 1.31 per place 347 first choices 265 places 2016/17 1.38 per place 371 first choices 269 places 2017/18 1.5 per place 406 first choices 271 places 2018/19 1.64 per place 428 first choices 261 places 2019/20 1.61 per place 425 first choices 264 places 2020/21 1.48 per place 408 first choices 275 places 2021/22 1.41 per place 382 first choices 270 places 2022/23 1.42 per place 379 first choices 267 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 346 first choices 274 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 307 first choices 263 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 271 first choices 257 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 247 first choices 253 places
First preferences per place at Woodchurch High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 247 first preferences for 253 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Woodchurch 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
2015/16 265 347 244 1.31
2016/17 269 371 250 1.38
2017/18 271 406 257 1.5
2018/19 261 428 252 1.64
2019/20 264 425 255 1.61
2020/21 275 408 264 1.48
2021/22 270 382 258 1.41
2022/23 267 379 261 1.42
2023/24 274 346 263 1.26
2024/25 263 307 247 1.17
2025/26 257 271 247 1.05
2026/27 253 247 236 0.98

Places offered

253

in 2026/27

Named first choice

247

623 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.5%

236 of 247

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 253 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

1,405

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,403

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

2

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 Woodchurch 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 Woodchurch High School reported 2 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Woodchurch High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,404 places 1,368 on roll 2013/14 1,404 places 1,372 on roll 2014/15 1,404 places 1,385 on roll 2015/16 1,405 places 1,401 on roll 2016/17 1,405 places 1,412 on roll 2017/18 1,405 places 1,410 on roll 2018/19 1,405 places 1,414 on roll 2020/21 1,405 places 1,425 on roll 2021/22 1,405 places 1,429 on roll 2022/23 1,405 places 1,424 on roll 2023/24 1,405 places 1,418 on roll 2024/25 1,405 places 1,403 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wirral

Postcode CH49 7NG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138853).

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.