School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Aylsham High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 16 families who named Aylsham High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 229 and 245 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

245 first preferences for 229 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Aylsham High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Aylsham 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

Aylsham High School turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Aylsham 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 0.99 per place 207 first choices 209 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 226 first choices 206 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 184 first choices 189 places 2018/19 1 per place 226 first choices 227 places 2019/20 1 per place 230 first choices 231 places 2020/21 1.06 per place 234 first choices 221 places 2021/22 1.17 per place 263 first choices 225 places 2022/23 1.06 per place 235 first choices 221 places 2023/24 1 per place 225 first choices 225 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 241 first choices 213 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 228 first choices 233 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 245 first choices 229 places
First preferences per place at Aylsham High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 245 first preferences for 229 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Aylsham 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
2015/16 209 207 206 0.99
2016/17 206 226 205 1.1
2017/18 189 184 184 0.97
2018/19 227 226 224 1
2019/20 231 230 225 1
2020/21 221 234 217 1.06
2021/22 225 263 223 1.17
2022/23 221 235 219 1.06
2023/24 225 225 225 1
2024/25 213 241 213 1.13
2025/26 233 228 227 0.98
2026/27 229 245 229 1.07

Places offered

229

in 2026/27

Named first choice

245

389 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.5%

229 of 245

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 229 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

1,062

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,110

104.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

48

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 Aylsham 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 Aylsham 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 Aylsham High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 980 places 999 on roll 2010/11 980 places 1,023 on roll 2011/12 1,025 places 1,021 on roll 2012/13 1,025 places 1,040 on roll 2013/14 1,025 places 1,058 on roll 2014/15 1,025 places 1,051 on roll 2015/16 1,025 places 1,033 on roll 2016/17 1,025 places 1,064 on roll 2017/18 1,025 places 1,042 on roll 2018/19 1,025 places 1,062 on roll 2020/21 1,025 places 1,095 on roll 2021/22 1,025 places 1,106 on roll 2022/23 1,025 places 1,143 on roll 2023/24 1,025 places 1,108 on roll 2024/25 1,062 places 1,110 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Norfolk

Postcode NR11 6AN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 121164).

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.