School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Fitzharrys School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 89 families who named Fitzharrys School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 167 and 251 put it first.

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

1.50

first choices for every place available

251 first preferences for 167 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Fitzharrys School

There is no published appeal success rate for Fitzharrys 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

Fitzharrys 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 Fitzharrys 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 0.75 per place 92 first choices 123 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 109 first choices 113 places 2017/18 0.73 per place 74 first choices 101 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 117 first choices 121 places 2019/20 0.64 per place 112 first choices 175 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 104 first choices 118 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 122 first choices 137 places 2022/23 0.83 per place 125 first choices 151 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 111 first choices 150 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 167 first choices 168 places 2025/26 1.2 per place 204 first choices 170 places 2026/27 1.5 per place 251 first choices 167 places
First preferences per place at Fitzharrys School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 251 first preferences for 167 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Fitzharrys School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 123 92 92 0.75
2016/17 113 109 109 0.96
2017/18 101 74 74 0.73
2018/19 121 117 117 0.97
2019/20 175 112 112 0.64
2020/21 118 104 104 0.88
2021/22 137 122 122 0.89
2022/23 151 125 125 0.83
2023/24 150 111 111 0.74
2024/25 168 167 153 0.99
2025/26 170 204 163 1.2
2026/27 167 251 162 1.5

Places offered

167

in 2026/27

Named first choice

251

511 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.5%

162 of 251

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 167 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 123257.

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

929

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

728

78.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

201

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

137

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 Fitzharrys 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 Fitzharrys School reported 201 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 78.4% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Fitzharrys School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,004 places 916 on roll 2010/11 1,004 places 876 on roll 2011/12 1,023 places 714 on roll 2012/13 1,023 places 644 on roll 2013/14 1,066 places 595 on roll 2014/15 1,051 places 562 on roll 2015/16 1,051 places 541 on roll 2016/17 1,051 places 533 on roll 2017/18 1,051 places 532 on roll 2018/19 1,051 places 548 on roll 2020/21 1,066 places 631 on roll 2021/22 1,066 places 679 on roll 2022/23 1,066 places 722 on roll 2023/24 1,066 places 776 on roll 2024/25 1,066 places 842 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 OX14 1NP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146392).

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.