School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Jesmond Park Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 96 families who named Jesmond Park Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 330 and 378 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Newcastle upon Tyne actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 7 years of official figures.

1.15

first choices for every place available

378 first preferences for 330 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Jesmond Park Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Jesmond Park 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 Newcastle upon Tyne 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 Newcastle upon Tyne, 32.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 154 of 480 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 Newcastle upon Tyne.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Newcastle upon Tyne 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

Jesmond Park Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 7 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 2 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 Jesmond Park Academy, 2020/21 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 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2020/21 0.76 per place 272 first choices 360 places 2021/22 0.76 per place 272 first choices 357 places 2022/23 0.91 per place 328 first choices 359 places 2023/24 1.08 per place 388 first choices 359 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 413 first choices 358 places 2025/26 1 per place 355 first choices 355 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 378 first choices 330 places
First preferences per place at Jesmond Park Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 378 first preferences for 330 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Jesmond Park Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2020/21 360 272 249 0.76
2021/22 357 272 247 0.76
2022/23 359 328 269 0.91
2023/24 359 388 303 1.08
2024/25 358 413 301 1.15
2025/26 355 355 290 1
2026/27 330 378 282 1.15

Places offered

330

in 2026/27

Named first choice

378

989 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

74.6%

282 of 378

Offers to families outside the council

11%

35 of 330 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

1,657

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,663

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

6

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

500

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 Jesmond Park 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 Jesmond Park Academy 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, 2020/21 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Jesmond Park Academy from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,100 2,200 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 2,050 places 1,956 on roll 2021/22 2,050 places 1,997 on roll 2022/23 2,050 places 2,000 on roll 2023/24 2,157 places 2,027 on roll 2024/25 2,157 places 2,068 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Jesmond Park Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Jesmond Park Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
20 September 2024 Arrangements did not comply REF4389

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Newcastle upon Tyne

Postcode NE7 7DP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146752).

Other contested secondary schools in Newcastle upon Tyne

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.