School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Oaks Park High School?

In 2026/27, Oaks Park High School offered 285 places and 125 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.44

first choices for every place available

125 first preferences for 285 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Oaks Park High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Oaks Park High 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 Redbridge 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 Redbridge, 7.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 45 of 567 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 Redbridge.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Redbridge 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

Oaks Park High School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Oaks Park High 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 0.43 per place 126 first choices 290 places 2016/17 0.43 per place 125 first choices 291 places 2017/18 0.51 per place 150 first choices 296 places 2018/19 0.52 per place 157 first choices 300 places 2019/20 0.58 per place 175 first choices 301 places 2020/21 0.57 per place 171 first choices 298 places 2021/22 0.54 per place 157 first choices 293 places 2022/23 0.51 per place 150 first choices 296 places 2023/24 0.52 per place 154 first choices 296 places 2024/25 0.68 per place 196 first choices 290 places 2025/26 0.62 per place 182 first choices 293 places 2026/27 0.44 per place 125 first choices 285 places
First preferences per place at Oaks Park High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 125 first preferences for 285 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Oaks Park High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 290 126 121 0.43
2016/17 291 125 124 0.43
2017/18 296 150 147 0.51
2018/19 300 157 149 0.52
2019/20 301 175 143 0.58
2020/21 298 171 134 0.57
2021/22 293 157 140 0.54
2022/23 296 150 145 0.51
2023/24 296 154 138 0.52
2024/25 290 196 163 0.68
2025/26 293 182 171 0.62
2026/27 285 125 125 0.44

Places offered

285

in 2026/27

Named first choice

125

641 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

125 of 125

Offers to families outside the council

9%

23 of 270 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

1,478

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,488

100.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 Oaks Park High 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 Oaks Park High 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Oaks Park High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,412 places 1,501 on roll 2010/11 1,321 places 1,509 on roll 2011/12 1,321 places 1,541 on roll 2012/13 1,422 places 1,536 on roll 2013/14 1,422 places 1,549 on roll 2014/15 1,422 places 1,582 on roll 2015/16 1,941 places 1,650 on roll 2016/17 1,941 places 1,688 on roll 2017/18 1,941 places 1,731 on roll 2018/19 1,941 places 1,786 on roll 2020/21 1,900 places 1,856 on roll 2021/22 1,900 places 1,846 on roll 2022/23 1,900 places 1,825 on roll 2023/24 1,900 places 1,827 on roll 2024/25 1,878 places 1,773 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Redbridge

Postcode IG2 7PQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 133405).

Other contested secondary schools in Redbridge

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.