School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Burford School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Burford School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 226 and 245 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

245 first preferences for 226 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Burford School

There is no published appeal success rate for Burford 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

Burford School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Burford 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 0.94 per place 185 first choices 196 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 205 first choices 212 places 2017/18 1.08 per place 291 first choices 270 places 2018/19 1.34 per place 316 first choices 236 places 2019/20 1.2 per place 275 first choices 229 places 2020/21 1.4 per place 328 first choices 235 places 2021/22 1.31 per place 306 first choices 233 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 280 first choices 233 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 252 first choices 231 places 2024/25 1.18 per place 270 first choices 228 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 257 first choices 232 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 245 first choices 226 places
First preferences per place at Burford School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 245 first preferences for 226 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Burford School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 196 185 185 0.94
2016/17 212 205 205 0.97
2017/18 270 291 267 1.08
2018/19 236 316 230 1.34
2019/20 229 275 227 1.2
2020/21 235 328 232 1.4
2021/22 233 306 230 1.31
2022/23 233 280 232 1.2
2023/24 231 252 229 1.09
2024/25 228 270 227 1.18
2025/26 232 257 228 1.11
2026/27 226 245 220 1.08

Places offered

226

in 2026/27

Named first choice

245

500 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.8%

220 of 245

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 226 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

1,225

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,227

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

234

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 Burford 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 Burford School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Burford School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,284 places 1,156 on roll 2013/14 1,284 places 1,136 on roll 2014/15 1,284 places 1,148 on roll 2015/16 1,284 places 1,136 on roll 2016/17 1,284 places 1,172 on roll 2017/18 1,284 places 1,327 on roll 2018/19 1,284 places 1,376 on roll 2020/21 1,443 places 1,433 on roll 2021/22 1,443 places 1,469 on roll 2022/23 1,459 places 1,488 on roll 2023/24 1,459 places 1,456 on roll 2024/25 1,459 places 1,438 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
Oxfordshire

Postcode OX18 4PL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138289).

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.