School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Dorcan Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named The Dorcan Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 170 and 187 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

187 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Dorcan Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Dorcan 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 Swindon 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 Swindon, 15.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 25 of 163 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 Swindon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Swindon 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 Dorcan Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 The Dorcan 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 0.95 per place 170 first choices 179 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 164 first choices 171 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 110 first choices 130 places 2018/19 0.76 per place 119 first choices 156 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 134 first choices 153 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 135 first choices 146 places 2021/22 0.84 per place 135 first choices 161 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 156 first choices 172 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 167 first choices 180 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 175 first choices 170 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 169 first choices 170 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 187 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at The Dorcan Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 187 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Dorcan Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 179 170 170 0.95
2016/17 171 164 164 0.96
2017/18 130 110 110 0.85
2018/19 156 119 119 0.76
2019/20 153 134 134 0.88
2020/21 146 135 135 0.92
2021/22 161 135 135 0.84
2022/23 172 156 156 0.91
2023/24 180 167 166 0.93
2024/25 170 175 160 1.03
2025/26 170 169 154 0.99
2026/27 170 187 167 1.1

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

187

318 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.3%

167 of 187

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 170 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

1,234

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

887

71.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

347

across Years 7 to 11

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 The Dorcan 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 The Dorcan Academy reported 347 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 71.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Dorcan Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,234 places 1,023 on roll 2012/13 1,234 places 946 on roll 2013/14 1,234 places 897 on roll 2014/15 1,234 places 881 on roll 2015/16 1,234 places 860 on roll 2016/17 1,234 places 838 on roll 2017/18 1,234 places 780 on roll 2018/19 1,234 places 746 on roll 2020/21 1,234 places 754 on roll 2021/22 1,234 places 718 on roll 2022/23 1,234 places 810 on roll 2023/24 1,234 places 858 on roll 2024/25 1,234 places 887 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
Swindon

Postcode SN3 5DA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137684).

Other contested secondary schools in Swindon

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.