School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Chipping Norton School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named Chipping Norton School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 179 and 180 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

180 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Chipping Norton School

There is no published appeal success rate for Chipping Norton 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

Chipping Norton School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Chipping Norton 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 0.92 per place 153 first choices 166 places 2016/17 0.87 per place 131 first choices 150 places 2017/18 0.8 per place 117 first choices 146 places 2018/19 0.74 per place 128 first choices 174 places 2019/20 0.84 per place 143 first choices 170 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 178 first choices 189 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 152 first choices 162 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 164 first choices 185 places 2023/24 0.85 per place 158 first choices 185 places 2024/25 0.95 per place 167 first choices 175 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 176 first choices 175 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 180 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Chipping Norton School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 180 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Chipping Norton School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 166 153 153 0.92
2016/17 150 131 131 0.87
2017/18 146 117 117 0.8
2018/19 174 128 128 0.74
2019/20 170 143 143 0.84
2020/21 189 178 178 0.94
2021/22 162 152 148 0.94
2022/23 185 164 164 0.89
2023/24 185 158 158 0.85
2024/25 175 167 158 0.95
2025/26 175 176 165 1.01
2026/27 179 180 163 1.01

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

180

331 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.6%

163 of 180

Offers to families outside the council

6%

10 of 179 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

854

71.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

346

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

262

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 Chipping Norton 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 Chipping Norton School reported 346 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 71.2% 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 Chipping Norton School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,462 places 1,066 on roll 2012/13 1,462 places 1,106 on roll 2013/14 1,462 places 1,039 on roll 2014/15 1,462 places 1,027 on roll 2015/16 1,462 places 1,001 on roll 2016/17 1,462 places 951 on roll 2017/18 1,462 places 907 on roll 2018/19 1,462 places 963 on roll 2020/21 1,462 places 954 on roll 2021/22 1,462 places 959 on roll 2022/23 1,462 places 971 on roll 2023/24 1,462 places 997 on roll 2024/25 1,462 places 1,025 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 OX7 5DY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137936).

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.