School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hethersett Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named Hethersett Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 279 and 293 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

293 first preferences for 279 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hethersett Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Hethersett 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

Hethersett Academy turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Hethersett 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 0.79 per place 90 first choices 114 places 2016/17 0.88 per place 104 first choices 118 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 143 first choices 168 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 186 first choices 200 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 226 first choices 195 places 2020/21 1.01 per place 235 first choices 232 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 223 first choices 227 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 259 first choices 234 places 2023/24 1.29 per place 292 first choices 227 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 293 first choices 256 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 273 first choices 257 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 293 first choices 279 places
First preferences per place at Hethersett Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 293 first preferences for 279 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hethersett Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 114 90 90 0.79
2016/17 118 104 104 0.88
2017/18 168 143 143 0.85
2018/19 200 186 179 0.93
2019/20 195 226 178 1.16
2020/21 232 235 221 1.01
2021/22 227 223 213 0.98
2022/23 234 259 226 1.11
2023/24 227 292 218 1.29
2024/25 256 293 251 1.14
2025/26 257 273 251 1.06
2026/27 279 293 269 1.05

Places offered

279

in 2026/27

Named first choice

293

568 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.8%

269 of 293

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 279 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

1,325

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,209

91.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

116

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 Hethersett 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 Hethersett Academy reported 116 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.2% 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 Hethersett Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 810 places 684 on roll 2014/15 810 places 610 on roll 2015/16 810 places 548 on roll 2016/17 810 places 576 on roll 2017/18 810 places 642 on roll 2018/19 810 places 726 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 964 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 1,049 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,107 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,173 on roll 2024/25 1,325 places 1,209 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Hethersett Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Hethersett Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
16 October 2023 No fault found REF4227

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 NR9 3DB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140188).

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.