Start your application

You can use the online in-year application form to transfer your child to a different school in Oxfordshire.

What happens next?

Once we have processed your application, we will contact you either by email or post.

Appeals

If your school application is refused, you may appeal against the decision.

Appeals are very costly for schools, and additional children joining schools through successful appeals will have a detrimental impact on the delivery of education and the efficient use of school resources. Please consider very carefully if you wish to proceed with an appeal.

Please note that selecting the “Waiting List and Appeal” option on the Parent Portal does not mean that an appeal has been submitted. All appeals must be lodged by following the above link.  

If you only select the “Waiting List and Appeal” option on the Parent Portal, no appeal will be registered.

Appeals for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2

Most appeals for these year groups are Infant Class Size Reviews, where there are or will be 30 children to one teacher in class, which is the legal limit.

Appeals for these year groups have a slim chance of success.

To win an infant class size review, one of the following has to be proved:

1. There are not, or will never be, 30 children to one teacher in the class while the children are in Reception, Year 1 or Year 2.
2. The application was processed incorrectly and the child was unfairly refused a place, eg, the application was lost and lower priority applications were successful.
3. The decision to refuse admission was so unreasonable that no reasonable person acting reasonably could have made it. In law this is the Wednesbury unreasonable test, and the test is a different (and stricter) test than the definition of ‘unreasonable’ used in general conversation.

The explanation given at appeal hearings is as follows: The threshold for finding that an admission authority’s decision to refuse admission was not one that a reasonable authority would have made is high.

The panel will need to be satisfied that the decision to refuse to admit the child was ‘perverse in the light of the admission arrangements’ i.e. it was ‘beyond the range of responses open to a reasonable decision maker’ or ‘a decision which is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question could have arrived at it.’

Generally, only 2% to 3% of infant class size reviews are successful for appellants each year.

As stated above, appeals are very costly for schools, and additional children joining schools through successful appeals will have a detrimental impact on the delivery of education and the efficient use of school resources. Please consider very carefully if you wish to proceed with an appeal.

I can't use the online form

If you are not able to use the online form, you can download and print a paper copy - Apply for a school transfer (.pdf format, 73Kb).

Scan a completed form and email to admissions.schools@oxfordshire.gov.uk or post to:

School Admissions Team
County Hall
New Road
Oxford
OX1 1ND

Alternatively, you can drop your form in by hand at the reception at the address above. Don't send us original documents, copies are acceptable.