School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Jane Austen College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Jane Austen College as their first choice did not get a place: 165 put it first and 150 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.

15

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

165 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Jane Austen College

There is no published appeal success rate for Jane Austen College, 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

Jane Austen College turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 4 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Jane Austen College, 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 0.89 per place 124 first choices 140 places 2016/17 1.27 per place 227 first choices 179 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 225 first choices 178 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 169 first choices 180 places 2019/20 0.71 per place 128 first choices 180 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 176 first choices 178 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 186 first choices 183 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 160 first choices 179 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 176 first choices 177 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 162 first choices 172 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 185 first choices 174 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 165 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Jane Austen College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 165 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Jane Austen College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 140 124 123 0.89
2016/17 179 227 166 1.27
2017/18 178 225 162 1.26
2018/19 180 169 133 0.94
2019/20 180 128 127 0.71
2020/21 178 176 136 0.99
2021/22 183 186 152 1.02
2022/23 179 160 155 0.89
2023/24 177 176 144 0.99
2024/25 172 162 143 0.94
2025/26 174 185 144 1.06
2026/27 179 165 150 0.92

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

165

506 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.9%

150 of 165

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 179 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

930

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

885

95.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

45

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

212

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 Jane Austen College 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 Jane Austen College reported 45 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.2% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Jane Austen College from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,100 places 187 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 378 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 575 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 754 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 885 on roll 2020/21 1,100 places 1,039 on roll 2021/22 1,100 places 1,049 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,056 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,058 on roll 2024/25 1,142 places 1,097 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Norfolk

Postcode NR3 1DD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140815).

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.