School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Dereham Neatherd High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Dereham Neatherd High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 218 and 225 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

225 first preferences for 218 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Dereham Neatherd High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Dereham Neatherd 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

Dereham Neatherd High School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Dereham Neatherd 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 1.01 per place 208 first choices 206 places 2016/17 1 per place 232 first choices 231 places 2017/18 1 per place 212 first choices 213 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 289 first choices 285 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 290 first choices 228 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 251 first choices 225 places 2021/22 1.27 per place 288 first choices 226 places 2022/23 1.17 per place 263 first choices 224 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 223 first choices 226 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 213 first choices 215 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 164 first choices 169 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 225 first choices 218 places
First preferences per place at Dereham Neatherd High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 225 first preferences for 218 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Dereham Neatherd 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
2015/16 206 208 205 1.01
2016/17 231 232 228 1
2017/18 213 212 212 1
2018/19 285 289 283 1.01
2019/20 228 290 225 1.27
2020/21 225 251 224 1.12
2021/22 226 288 226 1.27
2022/23 224 263 222 1.17
2023/24 226 223 222 0.99
2024/25 215 213 213 0.99
2025/26 169 164 164 0.97
2026/27 218 225 217 1.03

Places offered

218

in 2026/27

Named first choice

225

349 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.4%

217 of 225

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 218 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 121182.

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

1,056

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,134

107.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

78

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 Dereham Neatherd 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 Dereham Neatherd 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 Dereham Neatherd High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,132 places 1,297 on roll 2010/11 1,132 places 1,278 on roll 2011/12 1,132 places 1,254 on roll 2012/13 1,075 places 1,268 on roll 2013/14 1,311 places 1,277 on roll 2014/15 1,311 places 1,247 on roll 2015/16 1,275 places 1,221 on roll 2016/17 1,130 places 1,072 on roll 2017/18 1,130 places 1,040 on roll 2018/19 1,130 places 1,107 on roll 2020/21 1,130 places 1,176 on roll 2021/22 1,130 places 1,158 on roll 2022/23 1,175 places 1,186 on roll 2023/24 1,175 places 1,161 on roll 2024/25 1,056 places 1,134 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 NR20 3AX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144316).

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.