School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Didcot Girls' School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named Didcot Girls' School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 263 and 280 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

280 first preferences for 263 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Didcot Girls' School

There is no published appeal success rate for Didcot Girls' 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

Didcot Girls' 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 Didcot Girls' 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 207 first choices 225 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 270 first choices 267 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 259 first choices 267 places 2018/19 1.1 per place 329 first choices 299 places 2019/20 1.51 per place 405 first choices 269 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 306 first choices 273 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 299 first choices 268 places 2022/23 1.17 per place 346 first choices 295 places 2023/24 1.41 per place 379 first choices 269 places 2024/25 1.27 per place 372 first choices 292 places 2025/26 1.39 per place 367 first choices 264 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 280 first choices 263 places
First preferences per place at Didcot Girls' School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 280 first preferences for 263 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Didcot Girls' School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 225 207 207 0.92
2016/17 267 270 257 1.01
2017/18 267 259 247 0.97
2018/19 299 329 295 1.1
2019/20 269 405 267 1.51
2020/21 273 306 271 1.12
2021/22 268 299 264 1.12
2022/23 295 346 289 1.17
2023/24 269 379 267 1.41
2024/25 292 372 284 1.27
2025/26 264 367 258 1.39
2026/27 263 280 249 1.06

Places offered

263

in 2026/27

Named first choice

280

471 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.9%

249 of 280

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 263 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,392

103.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

42

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

243

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 Didcot Girls' 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 Didcot Girls' 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 Didcot Girls' School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,542 places 1,150 on roll 2013/14 1,542 places 1,168 on roll 2014/15 1,542 places 1,204 on roll 2015/16 1,542 places 1,217 on roll 2016/17 1,542 places 1,282 on roll 2017/18 1,542 places 1,313 on roll 2018/19 1,542 places 1,423 on roll 2020/21 1,593 places 1,549 on roll 2021/22 1,593 places 1,565 on roll 2022/23 1,593 places 1,613 on roll 2023/24 1,593 places 1,612 on roll 2024/25 1,593 places 1,637 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 OX11 7AJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138490).

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.