School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ditton Park Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Ditton Park Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 127 put it first and 100 of them were offered one.

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

27

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

127 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ditton Park Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ditton Park Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Slough 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 Slough, 6.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 88 of 1,349 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 Slough.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Slough 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

Ditton Park Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 7 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 Ditton Park Academy, 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 0.35 per place 62 first choices 177 places 2016/17 0.61 per place 110 first choices 181 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 172 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.15 per place 195 first choices 169 places 2019/20 1.15 per place 200 first choices 174 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 196 first choices 172 places 2021/22 0.76 per place 131 first choices 172 places 2022/23 0.94 per place 168 first choices 179 places 2023/24 0.81 per place 138 first choices 170 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 182 first choices 178 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 166 first choices 173 places 2026/27 0.73 per place 127 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at Ditton Park Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 127 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ditton Park Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 177 62 61 0.35
2016/17 181 110 92 0.61
2017/18 179 172 107 0.96
2018/19 169 195 113 1.15
2019/20 174 200 101 1.15
2020/21 172 196 111 1.14
2021/22 172 131 82 0.76
2022/23 179 168 106 0.94
2023/24 170 138 96 0.81
2024/25 178 182 117 1.02
2025/26 173 166 115 0.96
2026/27 173 127 100 0.73

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

127

674 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.7%

100 of 127

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 173 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

939

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

899

95.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

40

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Ditton Park Academy 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 Ditton Park Academy reported 40 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.7% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ditton Park Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,100 places 120 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 296 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 479 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 651 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 825 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,088 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,117 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,131 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,126 on roll 2024/25 1,139 places 1,130 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Slough

Postcode SL3 7UX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141009).

Other contested secondary schools in Slough

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.