School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Downham Market Academy?

In 2026/27, Downham Market Academy offered 193 places and 175 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.

0.91

first choices for every place available

175 first preferences for 193 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Downham Market Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Downham Market 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

Downham Market Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Downham Market 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 0.98 per place 248 first choices 252 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 207 first choices 210 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 210 first choices 223 places 2018/19 0.9 per place 175 first choices 194 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 185 first choices 211 places 2020/21 0.85 per place 184 first choices 217 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 226 first choices 235 places 2022/23 1.03 per place 269 first choices 261 places 2023/24 1.2 per place 278 first choices 231 places 2024/25 1.23 per place 314 first choices 256 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 242 first choices 219 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 175 first choices 193 places
First preferences per place at Downham Market Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 175 first preferences for 193 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Downham Market Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 252 248 248 0.98
2016/17 210 207 207 0.99
2017/18 223 210 209 0.94
2018/19 194 175 175 0.9
2019/20 211 185 185 0.88
2020/21 217 184 184 0.85
2021/22 235 226 226 0.96
2022/23 261 269 258 1.03
2023/24 231 278 228 1.2
2024/25 256 314 255 1.23
2025/26 219 242 214 1.11
2026/27 193 175 175 0.91

Places offered

193

in 2026/27

Named first choice

175

248 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

175 of 175

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 181 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 139204.

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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,236

103% of capacity

Over its capacity by

36

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

160

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 Downham Market 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 Downham Market Academy 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Downham Market Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,567 places 1,436 on roll 2014/15 1,567 places 1,376 on roll 2015/16 1,567 places 1,356 on roll 2016/17 1,567 places 1,274 on roll 2017/18 1,567 places 1,136 on roll 2018/19 1,567 places 1,084 on roll 2020/21 1,567 places 1,046 on roll 2021/22 1,567 places 1,113 on roll 2022/23 1,360 places 1,202 on roll 2023/24 1,360 places 1,269 on roll 2024/25 1,360 places 1,327 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 PE38 9LL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145196).

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.