Year 7 Admissions   Reception Admissions   Nursery Admissions  

William Hulme's Grammar School changed from being a selective school in the independent (fee-paying) sector to being a city academy funded by the government in September 2007. 

It is now the most popular school choice in Manchester for both the secondary and primary phases, and one of the most over-subscribed schools in the UK.

Part of the United Learning family of schools and academies, our students continue to achieve excellent results. Places are offered to boys and girls of all abilities regardless of their background and strictly in accordance with our published admissions policy.

Year 7 Applications

The agreed admissions number for year 7 of the Secondary Phase for September 2017 and for subsequent years is 120.  The admission number applies to those applicants being admitted from outside the Academy. Pupils in the Academy’s Year 6 progress to Year 7 without further application. If fewer than 60 pupils intend to transfer from Year 6, the Academy will admit over the admission number up to the overall size of the Year 7 group of 180. 

September 2018

All places for Year 7 for September 2018 have been allocated and accepted. No further places will be offered.  

September 2019

Applications for Year 7 for September 2019 should be made through the child's home Local Authority. Local Authorities will contact the parents/carers of children currently in Year 5 in the Summer Term with details of the application process. 

Parents and carers who would like to apply to Wiliam Hulme's Grammar School will make their child's application through their local authority, by naming this school as one of their preferences. 

Additionally, WHGS encourages applicants to complete a WHGS Supplementary Information Form to help our administration and to give parents/carers the opportunity to give us any additional relevant information. The Supplementary Forms will be available towards the end of August, by download from this website or from the school reception. Our new prospectus will also be available towards the end of the summer term. 

The closing date for making a secondary application and for completing a supplementary form is Wednesday, 31 October 2018.

Open Evening

We strongly encourage applicants to attend our Open Evening which is provisionally scheduled for Thursday, 4 October 2018, 4.30pm - 7.00pm.

Assessment Day

All applicants for Year 7 2019 will be called to attend our Banding Assessment on Friday, 7 December 2018. This is not an 11+ exam. See our Frequently Asked Questions and our Prospectus for more information about the Banding Assessment.

The optional Modern Foreign Language Aptitude Test will also take place on Friday, 7 December 2018. If you wish your child to have a go at this, please indicate this on a WHGS supplementary information form before Wednesday, 31 October 2018.

Reception Applications

September 2018

All places for Reception Class for September 2018 have been allocated and accepted. No further places will be offered. 

September 2019

We will be offering 60 Reception places for September 2019. The application deadline is Tuesday, 15 January 2019.

Reception offer date - sent by your own local authority: Tuesday, 16 April 2019. 

Nursery Applications

September 2018

All Nursery places for September 2018 have been allocated and accepted. No further places will be offered.

September 2019

Applications must be made direct to the school. The closing date for 2019 Nursery applications is Tuesday, 15 January 2019. Offers of places will be made by the school on Friday, 15 March 2019.

These are the admissions criteria we use when allocating our school places in a simplified format to make it easy for parents/carers to quickly understand. It is important to see our full admissions policy as well which gives you more detail about these criteria - please see our Admissions Policy below.

Children who have a Statement of Special Educational Needs or Education and Health Care Plan (in which our school has been named) are allocated places before we apply our admissions criteria in order.

1. Children who are Looked After (i.e. in care) or who have been Previously Looked After by a Local Authority
2. 10% of available places (for Year 7 only) are allocated to the children with the highest scores in our Modern Language Aptitude Test
3. Children with exceptional medical or social circumstances
4. Children who have an older brother or sister on the roll on the date of admission (but not in the sixth form)
5. The remaining places are offered on a 50% Distance and 50% Random basis (except for Primary and Pre-school which does not use Random)

For Year 7 only we use a banding assessment to put all applicants into 5 ability groups of equal size so that we can make sure our intake is comprehensive i.e. that we have the same proportion of children of every ability. We do not select just the brightest applicants. There is no pass/fail mark for our banding assessment. 

After we have divided all the applicants into 5 equal bands, we then apply the admissions criteria shown above to each band. For example if we have 1000 applicants, each band would have 200 children in it. We would then apply the criteria to decide which of the 200 children in each band would be allocated places. We will offer exactly the same proportion of places available to each band. For example, if we have 120 places available, we would offer 24 places in each band.

Admissions Policy for 2018

The Local Governing Body has determined that this shall be our Admissions Policy for entry to school year 2018-19:  

WHGS determined admissions policy 2018

Admissions Policy for 2019

The consultation period for our admission arrangements has now closed. The Governing Body has taken into consideration all comments received and has now determined that these shall be the school's admissions arrangements for 2019:

WHGS determined admissions policy 2019

At the present time there are no vacancies at this school including the Primary Phase of the school.

If you are considering moving your child from their current school to this or any other Manchester school, you must contact Manchester School Admissions (0161 245 7166). They will be able to advise you about vacancies in other schools and assist you in making an In Year application.

An In Year application will add your child's name to our waiting list. Places are allocated from the waiting list according to our admissions criteria and not by the length of time on the list. We will only allocate a place from the waiting list if a vacancy occurs in that year group.

Enquiries about the waiting list

We appreciate that many parents are extremely anxious to get their child into this school. If a place for a child does become available we will always contact the parent immediately by phone and/or letter to offer the place. If you have not heard from us, it is because your child has not been offered a place.

We would ask your co-operation in not telephoning to ask about the waiting list because of the huge volume of calls this generates which prevents us from doing other admissions work. If you would like to make an enquiry about your child's position on the waiting list, please email admissions@whgs-academy.org with the following information:

• Your child's full name
• Your child's date of birth
• The school year  your child is currently in
• The first line of your address

We will respond as soon as we can.  Thank you for helping us to provide a good service for all our applicants.

Parents have the right to appeal to an independent panel against the decision of the school not to offer their child a place.  In the normal admissions round, most appeals are heard during the summer term in time for the new academic year.  Appeals should be sent to the Clerk via the school. Parents are strongly advised to read the Guidance Notes before preparing their appeal.

NOTE: WHILE THESE ARRANGEMENTS GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO APPEAL AGAINST DECISIONS OF NON-ADMISSION, THE SCHOOL STANDARDS & FRAMEWORK ACT 1998 DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO A PLACE AT A PARTICULAR SCHOOL. EVEN IF YOU ARE APPEALING FOR A PLACE AT YOUR PREFERRED SCHOOL YOU SHOULD MAKE ARRANGEMENTS WITH ANOTHER SCHOOL IN CASE YOUR APPEAL IS UNSUCCESSFUL.

Appeals for Primary and Secondary places for 2018

Appeals should be sent to The Clerk to the Appeals, C/o the school.

The timetable for appeals this summer 2018 is as follows:

Completed appeals forms for Year 7 applications must be received at the school no later than 4.00pm on Thursday, 29 March 2018.  

Stage 1 of Year 7 appeals for September 2018 will be heard as a group at the school on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2018.  All appellants for Year 7 will be invited to attend on that evening. 

Stage 2 of the appeals will be heard in private over the course of the following week(s).

Completed appeals forms for Reception Class in the Primary Phase must be received no later than 4.00pm on Monday, 14 May 2018.  

Stage 1 of Primary (Reception) appeals for September 2018 will be heard as a group at the Millennium Windrush Centre on the morning of Monday, 18 June 2018.  All appellants for Reception Class will be invited to attend on that morning.  

Stage 2 of the Reception appeals will be heard in private over the course of the following week(s).

• Download Appeals Guidance Notes 
• Download an Appeals Form
• Advice about admissions appeals on the GOV.UK website

In Year Appeals

Parents who wish to appeal for an In Year place should submit their appeal, together with all the supporting documents they wish the panel to consider.  Appeals should be sent to the Clerk to Appeals c/o the school. Any In Year appeals will be heard by the independent panel within 30 school days of their receipt. 

Complaints about appeal procedure

If an appellant is considering making a complaint about the school's handling of their appeal, they should refer in the first instance to the government's factsheet and guidance about making an online complaint and the grounds for complaint which the government is allowed to consider.

Download factsheet

What is the school's catchment area?

The school does not have a catchment area as such. We do not draw a circle on a map and allocate only to those inside the circle. Part of our admissions policy is 'distance from school' i.e. we would allocate a number of places to those children living nearest to the school gate. The other part of our admissions policy for secondary applicants is 'random' allocation. Thus, you could live quite far from the school, or even in a neighbouring Local Authority, and your child would still have a chance of being allocated one of these places. To fully understand how 'distance' and 'random' fits into our policy, see Page 11 of our prospectus.

I live very near the school - will I get a place for my child?

How near you would need to live to be allocated a 'distance' place would depend upon where other applicants live and how many 'distance' places are available for allocation. On past experience, 'distance' places do tend to go to children living within 500 - 700 metres of school, but this does vary from year to year.

How do you decide who to give places to?

The school applies its published admission policy very strictly. There is no discretion in this. For example, we do not consider such things as convenience of transport to school - that is not a part of our policy. See our admission policy on Page 6 of the prospectus.

What is the entrance exam and where can I buy practice papers?

There is no entrance exam for this school, i.e. we do not ask children to do an 11+ with a pass or fail mark. We do invite all the Year 7 applicants in to do a non-verbal reasoning assessment in December, but this is purely for banding purposes, so that we can make sure we take children of all abilities in equal proportions. We do not only allocate places to 'bright' children. We do not provide practice papers and there is no need to tutor or coach children for our test.

What if my child does not pass the Year 7 exam?

No children pass or fail this assessment test - we consider all applicants equally in accordance with our published policy. The assessment will place each applicant into one of five ability bands of equal size.

Which language does my child have to speak to do the MFL aptitude test?

Year 7 applicants who choose the option of taking the MFL aptitude test do not need to know any specific language. The test is in a made-up language of which no candidate will have prior knowledge so it is a level playing field for all. We are testing the aptitude for using a language not knowledge of a specific language. We allocate 10% of Year 7 places to the students who achieve the top scores in this test.

How do I put my child on the waiting list?

Year 7, Reception and Nursery applicants will be retained on our waiting list for the first term of the academic year. To remain on the list after that time, and to enter the list for any other year, all applicants are required to go through Manchester School Admissions Co-ordinated Admissions scheme. Waiting list applicants should contact the School Admissions team to make an In Year application, which must be endorsed by the child's current school. If your child does not have a school, they will be able to help you find a school which has a place for your child. Very few applicants are ever allocated a place from our waiting list due to the very low level of pupil movement in this school - i.e. not many children leave us to vacate a place for another child.