School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Attleborough Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Attleborough Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 144 put it first and 143 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

144 first preferences for 148 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Attleborough Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Attleborough 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

Attleborough Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Attleborough 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 0.81 per place 105 first choices 130 places 2016/17 0.79 per place 100 first choices 126 places 2017/18 0.78 per place 117 first choices 150 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 129 first choices 138 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 162 first choices 174 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 123 first choices 129 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 127 first choices 139 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 143 first choices 159 places 2023/24 0.89 per place 146 first choices 164 places 2024/25 1 per place 149 first choices 149 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 182 first choices 174 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 144 first choices 148 places
First preferences per place at Attleborough Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 144 first preferences for 148 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Attleborough Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 130 105 105 0.81
2016/17 126 100 100 0.79
2017/18 150 117 116 0.78
2018/19 138 129 129 0.93
2019/20 174 162 162 0.93
2020/21 129 123 123 0.95
2021/22 139 127 127 0.91
2022/23 159 143 143 0.9
2023/24 164 146 146 0.89
2024/25 149 149 148 1
2025/26 174 182 169 1.05
2026/27 148 144 143 0.97

Places offered

148

in 2026/27

Named first choice

144

246 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.3%

143 of 144

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 148 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

804

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

767

95.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

37

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

180

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 Attleborough 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 Attleborough Academy reported 37 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.4% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Attleborough Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 923 places 902 on roll 2014/15 923 places 865 on roll 2015/16 945 places 827 on roll 2016/17 945 places 789 on roll 2017/18 945 places 759 on roll 2018/19 945 places 772 on roll 2020/21 945 places 827 on roll 2021/22 945 places 846 on roll 2022/23 945 places 876 on roll 2023/24 945 places 931 on roll 2024/25 984 places 918 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 NR17 2AJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140534).

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.