School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Northgate High School?

In 2026/27, Northgate High School offered 171 places and 161 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.

0.94

first choices for every place available

161 first preferences for 171 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Northgate High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Northgate 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

Northgate High School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Northgate 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 0.98 per place 165 first choices 168 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 114 first choices 116 places 2017/18 1 per place 165 first choices 165 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 85 first choices 89 places 2019/20 0.68 per place 115 first choices 170 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 139 first choices 156 places 2021/22 0.65 per place 114 first choices 176 places 2022/23 0.82 per place 144 first choices 175 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 178 first choices 184 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 198 first choices 194 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 210 first choices 194 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 161 first choices 171 places
First preferences per place at Northgate High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 161 first preferences for 171 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Northgate 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
2015/16 168 165 165 0.98
2016/17 116 114 114 0.98
2017/18 165 165 165 1
2018/19 89 85 85 0.96
2019/20 170 115 114 0.68
2020/21 156 139 139 0.89
2021/22 176 114 114 0.65
2022/23 175 144 144 0.82
2023/24 184 178 178 0.97
2024/25 194 198 194 1.02
2025/26 194 210 193 1.08
2026/27 171 161 161 0.94

Places offered

171

in 2026/27

Named first choice

161

281 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

161 of 161

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 167 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

1,156

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

880

76.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

276

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

342

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 Northgate 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 Northgate High School reported 276 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 76.1% 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 Northgate High School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,236 places 1,163 on roll 2015/16 1,400 places 1,098 on roll 2016/17 1,400 places 1,155 on roll 2017/18 1,280 places 1,135 on roll 2018/19 1,280 places 1,100 on roll 2020/21 1,280 places 1,067 on roll 2021/22 1,280 places 1,105 on roll 2022/23 1,342 places 1,113 on roll 2023/24 1,342 places 1,146 on roll 2024/25 1,498 places 1,171 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Norfolk

Postcode NR19 2EU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141268).

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.