School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 33 families who named Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 172 and 186 put it first.

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

1.08

first choices for every place available

186 first preferences for 172 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form, 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

Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form, 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 0.86 per place 121 first choices 141 places 2016/17 1 per place 140 first choices 140 places 2017/18 1.14 per place 158 first choices 139 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 158 first choices 140 places 2019/20 1.37 per place 203 first choices 148 places 2020/21 1 per place 147 first choices 147 places 2021/22 1.09 per place 160 first choices 147 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 155 first choices 147 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 147 first choices 145 places 2024/25 0.84 per place 150 first choices 178 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 191 first choices 179 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 186 first choices 172 places
First preferences per place at Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 186 first preferences for 172 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 141 121 120 0.86
2016/17 140 140 128 1
2017/18 139 158 132 1.14
2018/19 140 158 129 1.13
2019/20 148 203 143 1.37
2020/21 147 147 136 1
2021/22 147 160 141 1.09
2022/23 147 155 134 1.05
2023/24 145 147 133 1.01
2024/25 178 150 145 0.84
2025/26 179 191 168 1.07
2026/27 172 186 153 1.08

Places offered

172

in 2026/27

Named first choice

186

430 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.3%

153 of 186

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 172 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Non-Catholic children who are looked after or previously looked after children. (see Note 3 below).
2 Non-Catholic children of staff at the school where the member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made or where the member of staff has been employed at the school for less than two years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made but has been recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage.
3 Non-Catholic children who have a brother or sister at Blessed George Napier Catholic School at the time of admission.
4 Non-Catholic children currently attending a named feeder school (see note 5 below).
5 Children of other Christian communities. A Baptismal Certificate or letter of Dedication will be required or a letter confirming membership of the faith community from the Faith Leader should be provided. If a family have recently moved to the area, a letter from their previous Faith Leader will be acceptable.
6 Children of non-Christian faiths, for example Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, etc. A letter confirming membership of the faith community from the Faith Leader will be required. If a family have recently moved to the area, a letter from their previous Faith Leader will be acceptable.
7 Other children.

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

770

73.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

280

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form 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 Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form reported 280 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 73.3% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Blessed George Napier Catholic School and Sixth Form from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 847 places 848 on roll 2015/16 847 places 846 on roll 2016/17 847 places 852 on roll 2017/18 847 places 858 on roll 2018/19 847 places 861 on roll 2020/21 847 places 884 on roll 2021/22 847 places 879 on roll 2022/23 847 places 875 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 877 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 902 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Oxfordshire

Postcode OX16 9DG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141146).

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.