School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Uxbridge High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 71 families who named Uxbridge High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 220 and 225 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

225 first preferences for 220 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Uxbridge High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Uxbridge 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 Hillingdon 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 Hillingdon, 8.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 28 of 326 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 Hillingdon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Hillingdon 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

Uxbridge High School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 6 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Uxbridge 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 0.62 per place 140 first choices 226 places 2016/17 0.69 per place 157 first choices 227 places 2017/18 0.65 per place 148 first choices 228 places 2018/19 0.65 per place 143 first choices 219 places 2019/20 0.76 per place 173 first choices 228 places 2020/21 0.69 per place 157 first choices 226 places 2021/22 0.67 per place 151 first choices 224 places 2022/23 0.83 per place 189 first choices 228 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 213 first choices 234 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 267 first choices 231 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 211 first choices 216 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 225 first choices 220 places
First preferences per place at Uxbridge High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 225 first preferences for 220 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Uxbridge 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
2015/16 226 140 140 0.62
2016/17 227 157 144 0.69
2017/18 228 148 136 0.65
2018/19 219 143 134 0.65
2019/20 228 173 153 0.76
2020/21 226 157 137 0.69
2021/22 224 151 130 0.67
2022/23 228 189 149 0.83
2023/24 234 213 170 0.91
2024/25 231 267 169 1.16
2025/26 216 211 142 0.98
2026/27 220 225 154 1.02

Places offered

220

in 2026/27

Named first choice

225

875 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

68.4%

154 of 225

Offers to families outside the council

2%

5 of 220 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

1,150

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,146

99.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

4

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

148

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 Uxbridge 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 Uxbridge High School reported 4 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Uxbridge High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,298 places 1,173 on roll 2012/13 1,298 places 1,233 on roll 2013/14 1,298 places 1,268 on roll 2014/15 1,298 places 1,274 on roll 2015/16 1,298 places 1,219 on roll 2016/17 1,298 places 1,230 on roll 2017/18 1,298 places 1,205 on roll 2018/19 1,298 places 1,224 on roll 2020/21 1,298 places 1,336 on roll 2021/22 1,298 places 1,310 on roll 2022/23 1,298 places 1,354 on roll 2023/24 1,298 places 1,350 on roll 2024/25 1,298 places 1,345 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Uxbridge High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Uxbridge High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
28 November 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3474

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Hillingdon

Postcode UB8 2PR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136768).

Other contested secondary schools in Hillingdon

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.