School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ormiston Venture Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 83 families who named Ormiston Venture Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 168 and 250 put it first.

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

1.49

first choices for every place available

250 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ormiston Venture Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ormiston Venture 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

Ormiston Venture Academy turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Ormiston Venture 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 1.01 per place 173 first choices 171 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 176 first choices 175 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 226 first choices 181 places 2018/19 1.26 per place 226 first choices 180 places 2019/20 1.22 per place 214 first choices 176 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 198 first choices 174 places 2021/22 1.39 per place 248 first choices 178 places 2022/23 1.26 per place 217 first choices 172 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 240 first choices 174 places 2024/25 1.65 per place 276 first choices 167 places 2025/26 1.31 per place 213 first choices 163 places 2026/27 1.49 per place 250 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Ormiston Venture Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 250 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ormiston Venture Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 171 173 171 1.01
2016/17 175 176 174 1.01
2017/18 181 226 181 1.25
2018/19 180 226 179 1.26
2019/20 176 214 173 1.22
2020/21 174 198 174 1.14
2021/22 178 248 178 1.39
2022/23 172 217 172 1.26
2023/24 174 240 172 1.38
2024/25 167 276 166 1.65
2025/26 163 213 162 1.31
2026/27 168 250 167 1.49

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

250

469 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

66.8%

167 of 250

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 168 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

897

99.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

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 Ormiston Venture 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 Ormiston Venture Academy reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.7% 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 Ormiston Venture Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 900 places 700 on roll 2011/12 900 places 639 on roll 2012/13 900 places 626 on roll 2013/14 900 places 608 on roll 2014/15 900 places 664 on roll 2015/16 900 places 733 on roll 2016/17 900 places 785 on roll 2017/18 900 places 839 on roll 2018/19 900 places 870 on roll 2020/21 900 places 887 on roll 2021/22 900 places 904 on roll 2022/23 900 places 892 on roll 2023/24 900 places 887 on roll 2024/25 900 places 897 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 NR31 7JJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136187).

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.