School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at XP School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 86 families who named XP School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 50 and 125 put it first.

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

2.50

first choices for every place available

125 first preferences for 50 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at XP School

There is no published appeal success rate for XP 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 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 School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 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 School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 1.5 3.0 4.5 6.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.24 per place 61 first choices 49 places 2016/17 1.73 per place 85 first choices 49 places 2017/18 3.96 per place 194 first choices 49 places 2018/19 3.58 per place 172 first choices 48 places 2019/20 4.17 per place 196 first choices 47 places 2020/21 5.88 per place 288 first choices 49 places 2021/22 5.29 per place 259 first choices 49 places 2022/23 4.54 per place 209 first choices 46 places 2023/24 4.57 per place 192 first choices 42 places 2024/25 4.02 per place 185 first choices 46 places 2025/26 3 per place 150 first choices 50 places 2026/27 2.5 per place 125 first choices 50 places
First preferences per place at XP School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 125 first preferences for 50 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at XP 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 49 61 47 1.24
2016/17 49 85 48 1.73
2017/18 49 194 48 3.96
2018/19 48 172 45 3.58
2019/20 47 196 36 4.17
2020/21 49 288 42 5.88
2021/22 49 259 43 5.29
2022/23 46 209 40 4.54
2023/24 42 192 35 4.57
2024/25 46 185 38 4.02
2025/26 50 150 42 3
2026/27 50 125 39 2.5

Places offered

50

in 2026/27

Named first choice

125

427 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

31.2%

39 of 125

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 50 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

150

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

249

166% of capacity

Over its capacity by

99

reported as full or beyond

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 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 XP School 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at XP School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 200 400 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 350 places 50 on roll 2015/16 350 places 100 on roll 2016/17 350 places 150 on roll 2017/18 350 places 200 on roll 2018/19 300 places 250 on roll 2020/21 350 places 249 on roll 2021/22 300 places 248 on roll 2022/23 250 places 245 on roll 2023/24 250 places 244 on roll 2024/25 250 places 249 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 140964).

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.