School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Aureus School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named Aureus School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 142 and 148 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Oxfordshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

1.04

first choices for every place available

148 first preferences for 142 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Aureus School

There is no published appeal success rate for Aureus 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 Oxfordshire 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 Oxfordshire, 43% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 238 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 Oxfordshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Oxfordshire 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

Aureus School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Aureus School, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.85 per place 86 first choices 101 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 174 first choices 182 places 2019/20 0.84 per place 173 first choices 207 places 2020/21 0.87 per place 90 first choices 103 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 79 first choices 91 places 2022/23 0.94 per place 80 first choices 85 places 2023/24 0.69 per place 59 first choices 85 places 2024/25 0.45 per place 50 first choices 110 places 2025/26 0.51 per place 53 first choices 104 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 148 first choices 142 places
First preferences per place at Aureus School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 148 first preferences for 142 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Aureus School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 101 86 86 0.85
2018/19 182 174 174 0.96
2019/20 207 173 173 0.84
2020/21 103 90 90 0.87
2021/22 91 79 79 0.87
2022/23 85 80 80 0.94
2023/24 85 59 59 0.69
2024/25 110 50 50 0.45
2025/26 104 53 53 0.51
2026/27 142 148 131 1.04

Places offered

142

in 2026/27

Named first choice

148

478 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.5%

131 of 148

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 142 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

505

42.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

695

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Aureus 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 Aureus School reported 695 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 42.1% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Aureus School from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,200 places 120 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 317 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 524 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 605 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 606 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 541 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 505 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Oxfordshire

Postcode OX11 6FF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140653).

Other contested secondary schools in Oxfordshire

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.