School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at XP East?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 33 families who named XP East as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 49 and 58 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Doncaster actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

1.18

first choices for every place available

58 first preferences for 49 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at XP East

There is no published appeal success rate for XP East, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Doncaster 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 Doncaster, 24.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 137 of 553 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 Doncaster.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Doncaster 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

XP East turned first-choice families away in every one of the 9 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at XP East, 2018/19 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3.0 one first preference per place 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 1.49 per place 73 first choices 49 places 2019/20 2.72 per place 125 first choices 46 places 2020/21 2.08 per place 100 first choices 48 places 2021/22 1.62 per place 78 first choices 48 places 2022/23 2.04 per place 100 first choices 49 places 2023/24 2.09 per place 90 first choices 43 places 2024/25 2.71 per place 130 first choices 48 places 2025/26 1.72 per place 86 first choices 50 places 2026/27 1.18 per place 58 first choices 49 places
First preferences per place at XP East. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 58 first preferences for 49 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at XP East, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 49 73 20 1.49
2019/20 46 125 27 2.72
2020/21 48 100 26 2.08
2021/22 48 78 29 1.62
2022/23 49 100 28 2.04
2023/24 43 90 30 2.09
2024/25 48 130 37 2.71
2025/26 50 86 31 1.72
2026/27 49 58 25 1.18

Places offered

49

in 2026/27

Named first choice

58

298 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

43.1%

25 of 58

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 49 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

250

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

245

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

5

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

100

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 XP East 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 XP East reported 5 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at XP East from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 200 400 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 400 places 50 on roll 2018/19 329 places 100 on roll 2020/21 329 places 245 on roll 2021/22 300 places 287 on roll 2022/23 300 places 289 on roll 2023/24 300 places 288 on roll 2024/25 350 places 283 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Doncaster

Postcode DN4 5NG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143916).

Other contested secondary schools in Doncaster

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.