School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Easington Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Easington Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 189 and 202 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

202 first preferences for 189 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Easington Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Easington 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 County Durham 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 County Durham, 35.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 153 of 426 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 County Durham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not County Durham 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

Easington Academy turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Easington 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 1.05 per place 155 first choices 148 places 2016/17 1.07 per place 181 first choices 169 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 134 first choices 141 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 135 first choices 142 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 168 first choices 171 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 165 first choices 160 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 149 first choices 148 places 2022/23 1.51 per place 222 first choices 147 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 171 first choices 162 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 174 first choices 168 places 2025/26 1 per place 149 first choices 149 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 202 first choices 189 places
First preferences per place at Easington Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 202 first preferences for 189 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Easington Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 148 155 147 1.05
2016/17 169 181 169 1.07
2017/18 141 134 134 0.95
2018/19 142 135 134 0.95
2019/20 171 168 168 0.98
2020/21 160 165 160 1.03
2021/22 148 149 144 1.01
2022/23 147 222 147 1.51
2023/24 162 171 162 1.06
2024/25 168 174 168 1.04
2025/26 149 149 144 1
2026/27 189 202 184 1.07

Places offered

189

in 2026/27

Named first choice

202

340 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.1%

184 of 202

Offers to families outside the council

6%

11 of 189 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

931

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

785

84.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

146

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 Easington 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 Easington Academy reported 146 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84.3% 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 Easington Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 750 places 748 on roll 2012/13 750 places 742 on roll 2013/14 828 places 732 on roll 2014/15 828 places 711 on roll 2015/16 828 places 700 on roll 2016/17 931 places 722 on roll 2017/18 931 places 726 on roll 2018/19 931 places 724 on roll 2020/21 931 places 751 on roll 2021/22 931 places 739 on roll 2022/23 931 places 783 on roll 2023/24 931 places 784 on roll 2024/25 931 places 785 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
County Durham

Postcode SR8 3AY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138075).

Other contested secondary schools in County Durham

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.