School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wheatley Park School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Wheatley Park School as their first choice did not get a place: 168 put it first and 160 of them were offered one.

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

8

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

168 first preferences for 176 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wheatley Park School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wheatley 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

Wheatley Park School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Wheatley Park 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 0.86 per place 176 first choices 205 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 164 first choices 186 places 2017/18 0.82 per place 166 first choices 203 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 200 first choices 178 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 180 first choices 178 places 2020/21 1.02 per place 182 first choices 178 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 179 first choices 176 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 225 first choices 200 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 223 first choices 178 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 193 first choices 173 places 2025/26 1.27 per place 220 first choices 173 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 168 first choices 176 places
First preferences per place at Wheatley Park School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 168 first preferences for 176 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wheatley 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
2015/16 205 176 176 0.86
2016/17 186 164 164 0.88
2017/18 203 166 166 0.82
2018/19 178 200 154 1.12
2019/20 178 180 159 1.01
2020/21 178 182 160 1.02
2021/22 176 179 162 1.02
2022/23 200 225 184 1.12
2023/24 178 223 164 1.25
2024/25 173 193 169 1.12
2025/26 173 220 162 1.27
2026/27 176 168 160 0.95

Places offered

176

in 2026/27

Named first choice

168

397 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.2%

160 of 168

Offers to families outside the council

10%

17 of 176 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

1,100

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

919

83.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

181

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 Wheatley 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 Wheatley Park School reported 181 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.5% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wheatley Park School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,330 places 1,001 on roll 2014/15 1,330 places 996 on roll 2015/16 1,330 places 1,019 on roll 2016/17 1,330 places 995 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,040 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,068 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,091 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,109 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,131 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,137 on roll 2024/25 1,350 places 1,143 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 OX33 1QH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140875).

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.