School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Cherwell School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 154 families who named The Cherwell School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 243 and 396 put it first.

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

1.63

first choices for every place available

396 first preferences for 243 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Cherwell School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Cherwell 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

The Cherwell 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 The Cherwell 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 1.66 per place 430 first choices 259 places 2016/17 1.52 per place 393 first choices 258 places 2017/18 1.58 per place 424 first choices 269 places 2018/19 1.39 per place 385 first choices 276 places 2019/20 1.65 per place 451 first choices 274 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 335 first choices 262 places 2021/22 1.42 per place 360 first choices 254 places 2022/23 1.41 per place 364 first choices 259 places 2023/24 1.52 per place 389 first choices 256 places 2024/25 1.26 per place 344 first choices 273 places 2025/26 1.41 per place 360 first choices 255 places 2026/27 1.63 per place 396 first choices 243 places
First preferences per place at The Cherwell School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 396 first preferences for 243 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Cherwell School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 259 430 259 1.66
2016/17 258 393 257 1.52
2017/18 269 424 266 1.58
2018/19 276 385 273 1.39
2019/20 274 451 274 1.65
2020/21 262 335 257 1.28
2021/22 254 360 254 1.42
2022/23 259 364 259 1.41
2023/24 256 389 254 1.52
2024/25 273 344 271 1.26
2025/26 255 360 254 1.41
2026/27 243 396 242 1.63

Places offered

243

in 2026/27

Named first choice

396

965 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.1%

242 of 396

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 243 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

1,425

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,363

95.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

62

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

650

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 The Cherwell 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 The Cherwell School reported 62 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.6% 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 The Cherwell School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,850 places 1,813 on roll 2012/13 1,850 places 1,826 on roll 2013/14 1,850 places 1,863 on roll 2014/15 1,850 places 1,870 on roll 2015/16 1,850 places 1,885 on roll 2016/17 1,850 places 1,854 on roll 2017/18 1,850 places 1,909 on roll 2018/19 1,850 places 1,996 on roll 2020/21 1,850 places 2,073 on roll 2021/22 1,850 places 2,062 on roll 2022/23 1,850 places 2,009 on roll 2023/24 1,850 places 2,010 on roll 2024/25 2,075 places 2,005 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 OX2 7EE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137970).

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.