Year 7 Admissions Reception Admissions Nursery Admissions
Sixth Form Admissions In Year Admissions
William Hulme's Grammar School (WHGS) 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, 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 published admissions number (PAN) for Year 7 of the Secondary Phase is 120. This number applies to those applicants being admitted from outside the academy. Pupils in the academy’s Year 6 progress to Year 7 automatically. 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 2021
Parents and carers who would like to apply to WHGS will make their child's application through their home local authority, by naming this school as one of their preferences on the Common Application Form (CAF).
Due to Covid 19 restrictions in 2020, the school will not be holding a banding test or a Modern Language Aptitude Test for this year only. The September 2021 intake for Y7 will be purely allocated according to the remaining admissions criteria. If you have already completed a SIF for admission in September 2021, that information will no longer be relevant, as the Banding and MFL tests will not be taking place this year.
If you have already completed a SIF for application into September 2021, that information will no longer be relevant, as the Banding and MFL tests will not be taking place this year.
If your child has an older sibling who is already on roll in Years 7 – 11 of the Academy and who will still be on roll in Years 7 – 11 on the date of admission, you must include this information on the Common Application Form you submit to Manchester Local Authority. If you do not include this information on your form, the application will not be considered under the sibling criteria.
If you wish to apply under the Medical and Social Needs (exceptional circumstances) criterion, you will need to provide written evidence to the school of your child’s significant social or medical needs, addressed to the Admissions Officer, William Hulme’s Grammar School, Spring Bridge Road, Manchester, M16 8PR.
Examples of significant medical or social circumstances which the Academy may be able to take into account would be:
- Your child has a sensory impairment and needs to walk to the closest school for safety reasons.
- Your child has a serious physical disability which means they are unable to walk long distances or use public transport, and this is your nearest school.
The application closing date is 2 November 2020.
Local authorities will communicate application decisions to parents/carers on 1 March 2021.
Virtual Open Evening
From Thursday 1 October 2020
Online resources now available!
Reception Applications
September 2021
We will be offering 60 Reception places for September 2021 entry. Applications should be made through the child's home local authority, by naming this school as one of the preferences on the Common Application Form (CAF).
Applicants for Reception Class September 2021 entry should have a birth date between 1 September 2016 and 31 August 2017. Please see our Admissions Policy for information regarding the admission of children outside their normal age group.
If you wish to apply under the Medical and Social Needs (exceptional circumstances) criterion, you will need to provide written evidence to the school of your child’s significant social or medical needs, addressed to the Admissions Officer, William Hulme’s Grammar School, Spring Bridge Road, Manchester, M16 8PR.
Examples of significant medical or social circumstances which the Academy may be able to take into account would be:
- Your child has a sensory impairment and needs to walk to the closest school for safety reasons.
- Your child has a serious physical disability which means they are unable to walk long distances or use public transport, and this is your nearest school.
The application closing date is 15 January 2021.
Please note that being in WHGS Nursery Class 2020-21 does not guarantee your child a place in WHGS Reception Class 2021-22.
Local authorities will communicate application decisions to parents/carers on 16 April 2021.
Nursery Applications
September 2021
Applications must be made direct to the school.
Applicants for Nursery Class September 2021 entry should have a birth date between 1 September 2017 and 31 August 2018.
The application closing date is 15 January 2021. Offers of places will be made by the school in March 2021.
Reception and Nursery Open Afternoons
Unfortunately due to Covid 19, we will not be able to welcome prospective parents to look round this year, but details of how to access our virtual tour and open days will be available on the website in early October.
Sixth Form
Click here for more info about our Sixth Form
Twitter: @WHGSSixthForm
We offer students a wide range of subjects taught by highly-skilled specialists, excellent pastoral support, careers advice and facilities and enrichment opportunities, including:
- A dedicated Sixth Form Centre with excellent study facilities
- Sixth Form café and common room
- Small class sizes
- Private study room
- Sixth Form laptops available from the Flexible Learning Space
- Individual support and mentoring, both academic and personal
- Extensive range of co-curricular activities including volunteering, DofE, MUN, Bar Mock Trial, sport
- Specialist support for entry to Oxbridge, Law, Medicine and Dentistry
Destinations of this year’s Y13 leavers include the universities of: Manchester, Leeds, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, amongst others. We have students going on to study subjects such as: Law, Management, Mechanical Engineering, Psychology, Maths, Medicine, Optometry and many more.
We hope that you will take the opportunity to come and visit us and choose William Hulme’s as the place to continue your path to academic success.
In-Year applications to any other year group outside the normal admissions round
At the present time there are no vacancies in any year group at this school.
If you are considering moving your child from their current school to this or any other Manchester school, you must contact Manchester City Council School Admissions on school.admissions@manchester.gov.uk or 0161 245 7166. They will be able to advise you about vacancies in other schools and assist you in making an In-Year application. More information can be found on the council's website: https://www.manchester.gov.uk/admissions.
If you make an In-Year application to this school this will add your child's name to our waiting list. We will only allocate a place from the waiting list if a child leaves the school in that year group, creating a vacancy. Places are allocated from the waiting list according to our admissions criteria and not by the length of time spent on the list.
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 the school 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.
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 an Education and Health Care Plan (in which our school has been named) are allocated places before we apply our admissions criteria in order.
- Children who are Looked After (i.e. in care) or who have been Previously Looked After by a Local Authority
- 10% of available places (for Year 7 only) are allocated to the children with the highest scores in our Modern Language Aptitude Test
- Children with exceptional medical or social circumstances
- Children who have an older brother or sister on the roll on the date of admission (but not in the sixth form)
- The remaining places are offered on a 50% Distance and 50% Random basis (except for Primary Phase and Nursery 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 2019
The Local Governing Body has determined that this shall be our Admissions Policy for entry to school year 2019-20:
WHGS Determined Admissions Policy 2019
Admissions Policy for 2020
The Local Governing Body has determined that this shall be our Admissions Policy for entry to school year 2020-21:
WHGS Determined Admissions Policy 2020
Admissions Policy for 2021
The Local Governing Body has determined that this shall be our Admissions Policy for entry to school year 2021-22:
WHGS Determined Admissions Policy 2021 - Amended
Variation to Admissions Policy 2021
Admissions Policy for 2022
The Local Governing Body has determined that this shall be our Admissions Policy for entry to school year 2022-23:
WHGS Determined Admissions Policy 2022
Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Government has extended the amendments made to Appeals Arrangements in 2020 until 30 September 2021. This means that, as in 2020, Admissions Appeals for William Hulme’s Grammar School will take place online, on paper or by telephone.
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 to the Appeal Panel, 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 September 2021 entry
Please do not send in original documents with your appeal form as, unfortunately, we are not able to return them.
The timetable for appeals for Summer 2021 is as follows:
Year 7
Completed forms for Year 7 appeals must be received at the school no later than 4.00pm on Wednesday 31st March 2021.
Stage 1 (school’s case) for Year 7 appeals for September 2021 will be heard as a group hearing on Thursday 13th May 2021. All appellants for Year 7 will be invited to attend online on that date.
Stage 2 (individual cases) appeals will be heard in private online over the course of the following week(s).
Reception Class
Completed appeals forms for Reception Class must be received at the school no later than 4.00pm on Monday 17th May 2021.
Stage 1 of Primary (Reception) appeals for September 2021 will be heard as a group on the morning of Monday 14th June 2021. 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 days.
In Year Appeals
Parents who wish to appeal for an In Year place should submit their appeal form, 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 guidance about making an online complaint and the grounds for complaint which the government is allowed to consider.
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