School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Alderman Peel High School?

In 2026/27, Alderman Peel High School offered 96 places and 95 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.99

first choices for every place available

95 first preferences for 96 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Alderman Peel High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Alderman Peel High 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 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

Alderman Peel High School 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 Alderman Peel High School, 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 1.2 per place 116 first choices 97 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 87 first choices 88 places 2017/18 1 per place 85 first choices 85 places 2018/19 1.05 per place 110 first choices 105 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 112 first choices 115 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 124 first choices 126 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 112 first choices 113 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 121 first choices 122 places 2023/24 1 per place 118 first choices 118 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 133 first choices 134 places 2025/26 1.19 per place 130 first choices 109 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 95 first choices 96 places
First preferences per place at Alderman Peel High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 95 first preferences for 96 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Alderman Peel High School, 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 97 116 95 1.2
2016/17 88 87 87 0.99
2017/18 85 85 85 1
2018/19 105 110 105 1.05
2019/20 115 112 112 0.97
2020/21 126 124 124 0.98
2021/22 113 112 112 0.99
2022/23 122 121 121 0.99
2023/24 118 118 117 1
2024/25 134 133 133 0.99
2025/26 109 130 109 1.19
2026/27 96 95 95 0.99

Places offered

96

in 2026/27

Named first choice

95

145 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

95 of 95

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 95 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 121170.

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

525

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

604

115% of capacity

Over its capacity by

79

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 Alderman Peel High 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 Alderman Peel High 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 Alderman Peel High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 495 places 323 on roll 2010/11 495 places 353 on roll 2011/12 485 places 404 on roll 2012/13 505 places 404 on roll 2013/14 485 places 404 on roll 2014/15 506 places 428 on roll 2015/16 506 places 453 on roll 2016/17 506 places 451 on roll 2017/18 506 places 483 on roll 2018/19 525 places 499 on roll 2020/21 525 places 528 on roll 2021/22 525 places 562 on roll 2022/23 525 places 585 on roll 2023/24 525 places 593 on roll 2024/25 525 places 604 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 NR23 1RB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145089).

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.