School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Castle Newnham School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Castle Newnham School as their first choice did not get a place: 106 put it first and 103 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Bedford actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

3

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

106 first preferences for 147 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Castle Newnham School

There is no published appeal success rate for Castle Newnham School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Bedford 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 Bedford, 29.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 91 of 305 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 Bedford.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bedford 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

Castle Newnham School turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 8 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 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 Castle Newnham School, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.87 per place 95 first choices 109 places 2020/21 1.07 per place 153 first choices 143 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 137 first choices 145 places 2022/23 0.86 per place 117 first choices 136 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 144 first choices 139 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 134 first choices 143 places 2025/26 0.7 per place 95 first choices 135 places 2026/27 0.72 per place 106 first choices 147 places
First preferences per place at Castle Newnham School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 106 first preferences for 147 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Castle Newnham School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 109 95 95 0.87
2020/21 143 153 141 1.07
2021/22 145 137 134 0.94
2022/23 136 117 117 0.86
2023/24 139 144 126 1.04
2024/25 143 134 114 0.94
2025/26 135 95 89 0.7
2026/27 147 106 103 0.72

Places offered

147

in 2026/27

Named first choice

106

396 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.2%

103 of 106

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 147 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 109661.

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

567

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

742

130.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

175

reported as full or beyond

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 Castle Newnham School 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 Castle Newnham School 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Castle Newnham School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 600 places 597 on roll 2010/11 600 places 593 on roll 2011/12 600 places 584 on roll 2012/13 600 places 542 on roll 2013/14 600 places 492 on roll 2014/15 600 places 449 on roll 2015/16 600 places 431 on roll 2016/17 600 places 494 on roll 2017/18 600 places 483 on roll 2018/19 600 places 471 on roll 2020/21 750 places 651 on roll 2021/22 750 places 692 on roll 2022/23 750 places 712 on roll 2023/24 750 places 722 on roll 2024/25 567 places 742 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
Bedford

Postcode MK41 9DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 151042).

Other contested secondary schools in Bedford

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.