School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Marlborough Church of England School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named The Marlborough Church of England School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 193 and 194 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

194 first preferences for 193 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Marlborough Church of England School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Marlborough Church of England 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 Marlborough Church of England 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 Marlborough Church of England 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 1.15 per place 200 first choices 174 places 2016/17 1.14 per place 197 first choices 173 places 2017/18 1.2 per place 205 first choices 171 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 195 first choices 176 places 2019/20 1.26 per place 221 first choices 176 places 2020/21 1.15 per place 201 first choices 175 places 2021/22 1.16 per place 198 first choices 171 places 2022/23 1.33 per place 264 first choices 199 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 187 first choices 168 places 2024/25 1.23 per place 208 first choices 169 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 213 first choices 167 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 194 first choices 193 places
First preferences per place at The Marlborough Church of England School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 194 first preferences for 193 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Marlborough Church of England School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 174 200 169 1.15
2016/17 173 197 169 1.14
2017/18 171 205 168 1.2
2018/19 176 195 167 1.11
2019/20 176 221 169 1.26
2020/21 175 201 172 1.15
2021/22 171 198 166 1.16
2022/23 199 264 193 1.33
2023/24 168 187 158 1.11
2024/25 169 208 166 1.23
2025/26 167 213 163 1.28
2026/27 193 194 186 1.01

Places offered

193

in 2026/27

Named first choice

194

406 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.9%

186 of 194

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 193 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

238

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 Marlborough Church of England 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 Marlborough Church of England 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 The Marlborough Church of England School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,181 places 1,043 on roll 2013/14 1,138 places 1,039 on roll 2014/15 1,138 places 1,035 on roll 2015/16 1,138 places 1,035 on roll 2016/17 1,138 places 1,066 on roll 2017/18 1,138 places 1,038 on roll 2018/19 1,138 places 1,017 on roll 2020/21 1,138 places 1,039 on roll 2021/22 1,138 places 1,048 on roll 2022/23 1,138 places 1,063 on roll 2023/24 1,138 places 1,085 on roll 2024/25 1,138 places 1,083 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Oxfordshire

Postcode OX20 1LP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138817).

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.