School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Acle Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Acle Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 134 and 144 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

144 first preferences for 134 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Acle Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Acle 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 Norfolk 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 Norfolk, 43.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 244 of 565 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 Norfolk.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Norfolk 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

Acle Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Acle 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 0.9 per place 104 first choices 116 places 2016/17 0.76 per place 75 first choices 99 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 94 first choices 101 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 89 first choices 91 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 96 first choices 107 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 110 first choices 119 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 99 first choices 109 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 130 first choices 135 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 159 first choices 157 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 177 first choices 138 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 133 first choices 136 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 144 first choices 134 places
First preferences per place at Acle Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 144 first preferences for 134 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Acle Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 116 104 104 0.9
2016/17 99 75 75 0.76
2017/18 101 94 94 0.93
2018/19 91 89 89 0.98
2019/20 107 96 96 0.9
2020/21 119 110 110 0.92
2021/22 109 99 99 0.91
2022/23 135 130 130 0.96
2023/24 157 159 154 1.01
2024/25 138 177 137 1.28
2025/26 136 133 133 0.98
2026/27 134 144 132 1.07

Places offered

134

in 2026/27

Named first choice

144

240 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.7%

132 of 144

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 134 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

711

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

690

97% of capacity

Unfilled places

21

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 Acle 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 Acle Academy reported 21 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Acle Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 711 places 700 on roll 2013/14 711 places 644 on roll 2014/15 711 places 611 on roll 2015/16 711 places 536 on roll 2016/17 711 places 447 on roll 2017/18 711 places 445 on roll 2018/19 711 places 474 on roll 2020/21 711 places 498 on roll 2021/22 711 places 519 on roll 2022/23 711 places 582 on roll 2023/24 711 places 635 on roll 2024/25 711 places 690 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
Norfolk

Postcode NR13 3ER. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138758).

Other contested secondary schools in Norfolk

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.