School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Marshland High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named Marshland High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 153 and 174 put it first.

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

1.14

first choices for every place available

174 first preferences for 153 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Marshland High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Marshland 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

Marshland High School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Marshland 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 0.99 per place 120 first choices 121 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 127 first choices 125 places 2017/18 1.38 per place 222 first choices 161 places 2018/19 1.41 per place 189 first choices 134 places 2019/20 1.28 per place 196 first choices 153 places 2020/21 1.3 per place 210 first choices 162 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 176 first choices 154 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 166 first choices 152 places 2023/24 1.22 per place 192 first choices 157 places 2024/25 1.29 per place 202 first choices 157 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 193 first choices 147 places 2026/27 1.14 per place 174 first choices 153 places
First preferences per place at Marshland High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 174 first preferences for 153 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Marshland 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
2015/16 121 120 118 0.99
2016/17 125 127 120 1.02
2017/18 161 222 159 1.38
2018/19 134 189 130 1.41
2019/20 153 196 143 1.28
2020/21 162 210 156 1.3
2021/22 154 176 147 1.14
2022/23 152 166 147 1.09
2023/24 157 192 150 1.22
2024/25 157 202 147 1.29
2025/26 147 193 142 1.31
2026/27 153 174 145 1.14

Places offered

153

in 2026/27

Named first choice

174

272 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.3%

145 of 174

Offers to families outside the council

16%

25 of 153 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 121212.

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

810

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

802

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

8

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 Marshland 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 Marshland High School reported 8 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Marshland High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 810 places 805 on roll 2010/11 810 places 801 on roll 2011/12 810 places 805 on roll 2012/13 810 places 803 on roll 2013/14 810 places 757 on roll 2014/15 810 places 755 on roll 2015/16 810 places 724 on roll 2016/17 810 places 714 on roll 2017/18 810 places 727 on roll 2018/19 810 places 772 on roll 2020/21 810 places 819 on roll 2021/22 810 places 825 on roll 2022/23 810 places 804 on roll 2023/24 810 places 824 on roll 2024/25 810 places 802 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 PE14 7HA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142396).

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.