School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Caister Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Caister Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 139 put it first and 138 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

139 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Caister Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Caister 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

Caister 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 Caister 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 1 per place 117 first choices 117 places 2016/17 1 per place 99 first choices 99 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 104 first choices 108 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 145 first choices 151 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 147 first choices 151 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 137 first choices 140 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 99 first choices 105 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 124 first choices 135 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 117 first choices 133 places 2024/25 0.93 per place 108 first choices 116 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 150 first choices 147 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 139 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at Caister Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 139 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Caister Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 117 117 117 1
2016/17 99 99 99 1
2017/18 108 104 104 0.96
2018/19 151 145 145 0.96
2019/20 151 147 147 0.97
2020/21 140 137 137 0.98
2021/22 105 99 99 0.94
2022/23 135 124 124 0.92
2023/24 133 117 117 0.88
2024/25 116 108 108 0.93
2025/26 147 150 142 1.02
2026/27 146 139 138 0.95

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

139

238 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.3%

138 of 139

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 146 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

805

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

630

78.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

175

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 Caister 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 Caister Academy reported 175 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 78.3% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Caister Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 825 places 615 on roll 2015/16 805 places 603 on roll 2016/17 805 places 578 on roll 2017/18 805 places 614 on roll 2018/19 805 places 663 on roll 2020/21 805 places 685 on roll 2021/22 805 places 691 on roll 2022/23 805 places 688 on roll 2023/24 805 places 669 on roll 2024/25 805 places 630 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Norfolk

Postcode NR30 5LS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141331).

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.