School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King's Lynn Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named King's Lynn Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 191 put it first and 182 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.

9

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

191 first preferences for 193 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King's Lynn Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for King's Lynn 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

King's Lynn 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 King's Lynn 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 0.87 per place 137 first choices 157 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 134 first choices 147 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 153 first choices 168 places 2018/19 0.81 per place 160 first choices 197 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 180 first choices 198 places 2020/21 0.92 per place 158 first choices 171 places 2021/22 1.4 per place 239 first choices 171 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 187 first choices 195 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 230 first choices 190 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 190 first choices 189 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 221 first choices 193 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 191 first choices 193 places
First preferences per place at King's Lynn Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 191 first preferences for 193 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King's Lynn Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 157 137 137 0.87
2016/17 147 134 134 0.91
2017/18 168 153 153 0.91
2018/19 197 160 160 0.81
2019/20 198 180 167 0.91
2020/21 171 158 146 0.92
2021/22 171 239 152 1.4
2022/23 195 187 175 0.96
2023/24 190 230 177 1.21
2024/25 189 190 168 1.01
2025/26 193 221 181 1.15
2026/27 193 191 182 0.99

Places offered

193

in 2026/27

Named first choice

191

413 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.3%

182 of 191

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 193 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

1,110

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

947

85.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

163

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 King's Lynn 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 King's Lynn Academy reported 163 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 85.3% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at King's Lynn Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,100 places 675 on roll 2011/12 900 places 689 on roll 2012/13 900 places 650 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 633 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 583 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 626 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 644 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 699 on roll 2018/19 900 places 773 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 890 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 912 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 947 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 958 on roll 2024/25 1,110 places 947 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 PE30 4QG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136202).

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.