School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Oakwood High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 28 families who named Oakwood High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 205 and 216 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

216 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Oakwood High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Oakwood 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 Rotherham 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 Rotherham, 50.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 232 of 460 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 Rotherham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Rotherham 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

Oakwood High School turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — 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 Oakwood 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 0.79 per place 158 first choices 200 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 207 first choices 209 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 202 first choices 206 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 204 first choices 210 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 191 first choices 210 places 2020/21 0.85 per place 176 first choices 207 places 2021/22 1.08 per place 222 first choices 206 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 170 first choices 202 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 216 first choices 206 places 2024/25 1.06 per place 218 first choices 205 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 251 first choices 204 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 216 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at Oakwood High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 216 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Oakwood 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
2015/16 200 158 158 0.79
2016/17 209 207 187 0.99
2017/18 206 202 179 0.98
2018/19 210 204 175 0.97
2019/20 210 191 176 0.91
2020/21 207 176 168 0.85
2021/22 206 222 176 1.08
2022/23 202 170 170 0.84
2023/24 206 216 183 1.05
2024/25 205 218 190 1.06
2025/26 204 251 193 1.23
2026/27 205 216 188 1.05

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

216

432 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87%

188 of 216

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 205 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,063

101.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

13

reported as full or beyond

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 Oakwood 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 Oakwood 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Oakwood High School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,050 places 1,027 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 1,019 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 1,020 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 1,027 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,032 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,018 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,044 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,049 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,064 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,071 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,063 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
Rotherham

Postcode S60 2UH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140459).

Other contested secondary schools in Rotherham

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.