School admission appeals in Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes heard 209 school admission appeals in 2026, and 37 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Milton Keynes as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Milton Keynes success rate has run 1.5 percentage points lower than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in Milton Keynes were upheld
133 of 744 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
245
by parents in Milton Keynes
Appeals heard by a panel
209
85% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
37
17.7% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
34.9% of the primary appeals heard in Milton Keynes were infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
In Milton Keynes, 29.7% of infant class size appeals were upheld (22 of 74 appeals heard in 2024–2026) against 9.4% across England. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in Milton Keynes
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Milton Keynes rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
Which appeals succeed in Milton Keynes
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 532 | 62 | 11.7% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 212 | 71 | 33.5% | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 74 | 22 | 29.7% | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in Milton Keynes, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Milton Keynes | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 189 | 22 | 11.6% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 187 | 36 | 19.3% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 198 | 30 | 15.2% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 231 | 42 | 18.2% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 342 | 48 | 14% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 244 | 45 | 18.4% | 19% |
| 2022 | 291 | 58 | 19.9% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 304 | 54 | 17.8% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 231 | 27 | 11.7% | 20% |
| 2025 | 304 | 69 | 22.7% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 209 | 37 | 17.7% | 18.5% |
How Milton Keynes compares
Success rate ranking
75 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
50 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 744 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Schools in Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes has 104 state-funded mainstream schools — 89 primary, 12 secondary and 3 all-through. The largest concentrations are in Milton Keynes, Newport Pagnell, Olney and Bletchley.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Milton Keynes schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 10 secondary and 21 primary schools in Milton Keynes →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oakgrove School | 237 | 346 | 1.46 |
| Glebe Farm School | 124 | 172 | 1.39 |
| Denbigh School | 257 | 327 | 1.27 |
| E-Act Ousedale School | 352 | 386 | 1.10 |
| Watling Academy | 351 | 380 | 1.08 |
| St Paul's Catholic School | 258 | 274 | 1.06 |
| Shenley Brook End School | 296 | 298 | 1.01 |
| Lord Grey Academy | 247 | 241 | 0.98 |
| The Radcliffe School | 199 | 174 | 0.87 |
| Kents Hill Park all-through school | 118 | 56 | 0.47 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glebe Farm School | 82 | 131 | 1.60 |
| Bow Brickhill CofE VA Primary School | 15 | 22 | 1.47 |
| Middleton Primary School | 90 | 129 | 1.43 |
| Caroline Haslett Primary School | 60 | 74 | 1.23 |
| Fairfields Primary School | 90 | 105 | 1.17 |
| Howe Park School | 29 | 33 | 1.14 |
| Watling Primary School | 49 | 56 | 1.14 |
| Holne Chase Primary School | 30 | 33 | 1.10 |
| Whitehouse Primary School | 90 | 98 | 1.09 |
| Kents Hill Park all-through school | 30 | 31 | 1.03 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in Milton Keynes
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. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 6 objections about schools in Milton Keynes, and found the arrangements did not comply in 4.
Too few to quote as a rate — the national figure is 68.3%.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| New Bradwell Primary School | 5 September 2025 | Did not comply |
| Oakgrove School | 30 August 2018 | Complied |
| Oakgrove School | 9 June 2017 | Complied |
| St Mary and St Giles Church of England Junior School | 28 August 2015 | Did not comply |
| The Premier Academy | 1 October 2012 | Did not comply |
| Portfields Combined School | 16 August 2011 | Did not comply |
Milton Keynes does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.