School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Gillotts School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 60 families who named Gillotts School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 173 and 222 put it first.

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

1.28

first choices for every place available

222 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Gillotts School

There is no published appeal success rate for Gillotts 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

Gillotts School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Gillotts 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 1.16 per place 208 first choices 180 places 2016/17 1.17 per place 211 first choices 181 places 2017/18 1.28 per place 229 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 215 first choices 178 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 240 first choices 195 places 2020/21 1.31 per place 226 first choices 172 places 2021/22 1.2 per place 232 first choices 194 places 2022/23 1.23 per place 241 first choices 196 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 193 first choices 173 places 2024/25 1.26 per place 237 first choices 188 places 2025/26 1.26 per place 214 first choices 170 places 2026/27 1.28 per place 222 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at Gillotts School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 222 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Gillotts School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 208 172 1.16
2016/17 181 211 157 1.17
2017/18 179 229 163 1.28
2018/19 178 215 163 1.21
2019/20 195 240 176 1.23
2020/21 172 226 151 1.31
2021/22 194 232 161 1.2
2022/23 196 241 184 1.23
2023/24 173 193 154 1.12
2024/25 188 237 176 1.26
2025/26 170 214 155 1.26
2026/27 173 222 162 1.28

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

222

477 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73%

162 of 222

Offers to families outside the council

10%

17 of 173 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

926

102.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

26

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 Gillotts 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 Gillotts 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Gillotts School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 900 places 880 on roll 2012/13 900 places 842 on roll 2013/14 900 places 819 on roll 2014/15 900 places 806 on roll 2015/16 900 places 802 on roll 2016/17 900 places 819 on roll 2017/18 900 places 840 on roll 2018/19 900 places 860 on roll 2020/21 900 places 889 on roll 2021/22 900 places 921 on roll 2022/23 900 places 952 on roll 2023/24 900 places 926 on roll 2024/25 900 places 926 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 RG9 1PS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137921).

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.