School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at E-Act Ousedale School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 41 families who named E-Act Ousedale School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 352 and 386 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

386 first preferences for 352 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at E-Act Ousedale School

There is no published appeal success rate for E-Act Ousedale 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 Milton Keynes 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 Milton Keynes, 11.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 62 of 532 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 Milton Keynes.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Milton Keynes 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

E-Act Ousedale 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 E-Act Ousedale 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 1.02 per place 364 first choices 357 places 2016/17 1.22 per place 432 first choices 355 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 416 first choices 353 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 425 first choices 352 places 2019/20 1.14 per place 411 first choices 359 places 2020/21 1.29 per place 464 first choices 360 places 2021/22 1.22 per place 436 first choices 357 places 2022/23 1.24 per place 446 first choices 359 places 2023/24 1.27 per place 450 first choices 354 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 407 first choices 351 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 380 first choices 354 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 386 first choices 352 places
First preferences per place at E-Act Ousedale School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 386 first preferences for 352 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at E-Act Ousedale School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 357 364 338 1.02
2016/17 355 432 345 1.22
2017/18 353 416 345 1.18
2018/19 352 425 337 1.21
2019/20 359 411 349 1.14
2020/21 360 464 349 1.29
2021/22 357 436 350 1.22
2022/23 359 446 352 1.24
2023/24 354 450 349 1.27
2024/25 351 407 344 1.16
2025/26 354 380 344 1.07
2026/27 352 386 345 1.1

Places offered

352

in 2026/27

Named first choice

386

526 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.4%

345 of 386

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 352 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

1,994

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,827

91.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

167

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

400

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 E-Act Ousedale 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 E-Act Ousedale School reported 167 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.6% 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 E-Act Ousedale School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,200 2,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 2,066 places 2,051 on roll 2012/13 2,066 places 2,122 on roll 2013/14 2,066 places 2,195 on roll 2014/15 2,066 places 2,188 on roll 2015/16 2,066 places 2,194 on roll 2016/17 2,200 places 2,197 on roll 2017/18 2,200 places 2,186 on roll 2018/19 2,200 places 2,176 on roll 2020/21 2,200 places 2,185 on roll 2021/22 2,200 places 2,200 on roll 2022/23 2,200 places 2,212 on roll 2023/24 2,200 places 2,275 on roll 2024/25 2,394 places 2,255 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Milton Keynes

Postcode MK16 0BJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137052).

Other contested secondary schools in Milton Keynes

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.