School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 38 families who named The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 270 and 300 put it first.

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

1.11

first choices for every place available

300 first preferences for 270 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College

There is no published appeal success rate for The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College, 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 Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College, 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 0.91 per place 205 first choices 226 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 224 first choices 248 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 281 first choices 292 places 2018/19 1.02 per place 297 first choices 291 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 324 first choices 267 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 275 first choices 268 places 2021/22 1.25 per place 327 first choices 262 places 2022/23 1.26 per place 344 first choices 273 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 337 first choices 268 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 314 first choices 270 places 2025/26 1.22 per place 330 first choices 270 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 300 first choices 270 places
First preferences per place at The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 300 first preferences for 270 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 226 205 205 0.91
2016/17 248 224 224 0.9
2017/18 292 281 276 0.96
2018/19 291 297 260 1.02
2019/20 267 324 259 1.21
2020/21 268 275 262 1.03
2021/22 262 327 250 1.25
2022/23 273 344 266 1.26
2023/24 268 337 259 1.26
2024/25 270 314 265 1.16
2025/26 270 330 259 1.22
2026/27 270 300 262 1.11

Places offered

270

in 2026/27

Named first choice

300

646 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.3%

262 of 300

Offers to families outside the council

1%

4 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

1,310

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,376

105% of capacity

Over its capacity by

66

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College 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 Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,449 places 1,296 on roll 2012/13 1,449 places 1,242 on roll 2013/14 1,449 places 1,184 on roll 2014/15 1,449 places 1,206 on roll 2015/16 1,449 places 1,243 on roll 2016/17 1,449 places 1,308 on roll 2017/18 1,449 places 1,412 on roll 2018/19 1,449 places 1,551 on roll 2020/21 1,449 places 1,648 on roll 2021/22 1,449 places 1,611 on roll 2022/23 1,449 places 1,603 on roll 2023/24 1,610 places 1,598 on roll 2024/25 1,610 places 1,572 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 SN4 9DJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137160).

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.