School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Heyford Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Heyford Park School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 36 and 43 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Oxfordshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 6 years of official figures.

1.19

first choices for every place available

43 first preferences for 36 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Heyford Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Heyford Park 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

Heyford Park School turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 6 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

Only 2 years of published figures exist for this school, so there is nothing to plot yet. The figures themselves are below.

View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Heyford Park School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2021/22 9 8 8 too small to publish
2022/23 19 8 8 too small to publish
2023/24 28 18 18 too small to publish
2024/25 36 16 16 too small to publish
2025/26 38 34 34 0.89
2026/27 36 43 28 1.19

Places offered

36

in 2026/27

Named first choice

43

166 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

65.1%

28 of 43

Offers to families outside the council

6%

2 of 36 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

840

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

626

74.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

214

across Years 7 to 11

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 Heyford Park 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 Heyford Park School reported 214 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 74.5% 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, 2020/21 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Heyford Park School from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 840 places 522 on roll 2021/22 840 places 524 on roll 2022/23 840 places 562 on roll 2023/24 840 places 581 on roll 2024/25 840 places 626 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Oxfordshire

Postcode OX25 5HD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148353).

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.