School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Oathall Community College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 33 families who named Oathall Community College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 264 and 265 put it first.

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

1

first choices for every place available

265 first preferences for 264 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Oathall Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Oathall Community 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 West Sussex 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 West Sussex, 19.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 239 of 1,199 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 West Sussex.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not West Sussex 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

Oathall Community College 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 Oathall Community 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 0.82 per place 181 first choices 222 places 2016/17 0.76 per place 164 first choices 215 places 2017/18 0.9 per place 201 first choices 223 places 2018/19 0.84 per place 195 first choices 232 places 2019/20 0.77 per place 207 first choices 270 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 233 first choices 263 places 2021/22 0.77 per place 222 first choices 290 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 247 first choices 270 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 247 first choices 267 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 285 first choices 273 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 255 first choices 265 places 2026/27 1 per place 265 first choices 264 places
First preferences per place at Oathall Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 265 first preferences for 264 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Oathall Community College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 222 181 181 0.82
2016/17 215 164 164 0.76
2017/18 223 201 201 0.9
2018/19 232 195 195 0.84
2019/20 270 207 206 0.77
2020/21 263 233 233 0.89
2021/22 290 222 222 0.77
2022/23 270 247 226 0.91
2023/24 267 247 242 0.93
2024/25 273 285 249 1.04
2025/26 265 255 243 0.96
2026/27 264 265 232 1

Places offered

264

in 2026/27

Named first choice

265

684 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.5%

232 of 265

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 264 offers

How close you had to live

Oathall Community College filled its places in 2026, and 1,894m — 1.18 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under the out area criterion.

Last place offered at

1.18 mi

1,894 metres, 2026

Under criterion

out area

as the council described it

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

West Sussex Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

1,416

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,295

91.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

121

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 Oathall Community 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 Oathall Community College reported 121 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.5% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Oathall Community College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,350 places 1,218 on roll 2010/11 1,350 places 1,183 on roll 2011/12 1,350 places 1,125 on roll 2012/13 1,416 places 1,003 on roll 2013/14 1,416 places 956 on roll 2014/15 1,416 places 928 on roll 2015/16 1,416 places 949 on roll 2016/17 1,416 places 964 on roll 2017/18 1,416 places 977 on roll 2018/19 1,416 places 1,014 on roll 2020/21 1,416 places 1,066 on roll 2021/22 1,416 places 1,114 on roll 2022/23 1,416 places 1,185 on roll 2023/24 1,416 places 1,259 on roll 2024/25 1,416 places 1,295 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
West Sussex

Postcode RH16 2AQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 126085).

Other contested secondary schools in West Sussex

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.