School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Oakgrove School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 127 families who named Oakgrove School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 237 and 346 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.

1.46

first choices for every place available

346 first preferences for 237 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Oakgrove School

There is no published appeal success rate for Oakgrove 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

Oakgrove 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 Oakgrove 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 1.21 per place 352 first choices 292 places 2016/17 1.22 per place 362 first choices 297 places 2017/18 1.2 per place 354 first choices 296 places 2018/19 1.45 per place 431 first choices 297 places 2019/20 1.5 per place 403 first choices 269 places 2020/21 1.51 per place 405 first choices 269 places 2021/22 1.32 per place 316 first choices 239 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 312 first choices 263 places 2023/24 1.52 per place 358 first choices 236 places 2024/25 1.6 per place 369 first choices 230 places 2025/26 1.32 per place 314 first choices 238 places 2026/27 1.46 per place 346 first choices 237 places
First preferences per place at Oakgrove School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 346 first preferences for 237 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Oakgrove School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 292 352 272 1.21
2016/17 297 362 280 1.22
2017/18 296 354 275 1.2
2018/19 297 431 265 1.45
2019/20 269 403 247 1.5
2020/21 269 405 252 1.51
2021/22 239 316 218 1.32
2022/23 263 312 249 1.19
2023/24 236 358 222 1.52
2024/25 230 369 222 1.6
2025/26 238 314 219 1.32
2026/27 237 346 219 1.46

Places offered

237

in 2026/27

Named first choice

346

953 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

63.3%

219 of 346

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 237 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

2,132

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

2,064

96.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

68

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Oakgrove 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 Oakgrove School reported 68 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.8% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Oakgrove School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,250 2,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,502 places 1,066 on roll 2011/12 1,502 places 1,113 on roll 2012/13 1,502 places 1,167 on roll 2013/14 1,502 places 1,247 on roll 2014/15 1,502 places 1,294 on roll 2015/16 1,802 places 1,385 on roll 2016/17 2,432 places 1,667 on roll 2017/18 2,432 places 1,854 on roll 2018/19 2,432 places 2,000 on roll 2020/21 2,432 places 2,196 on roll 2021/22 2,432 places 2,261 on roll 2022/23 2,432 places 2,369 on roll 2023/24 2,432 places 2,441 on roll 2024/25 2,432 places 2,445 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. Oakgrove School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Oakgrove School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
30 August 2018 No fault found ADA3456
9 June 2017 No fault found ADA3262

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
Milton Keynes

Postcode MK10 9JQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136454).

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.