School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ormiston Victory Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 15 families who named Ormiston Victory Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 284 and 287 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

287 first preferences for 284 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ormiston Victory Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Ormiston Victory 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 Victory Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Ormiston Victory 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 0.97 per place 148 first choices 153 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 180 first choices 193 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 214 first choices 224 places 2018/19 1.02 per place 246 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 267 first choices 236 places 2020/21 1.27 per place 274 first choices 215 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 214 first choices 203 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 246 first choices 258 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 268 first choices 288 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 291 first choices 280 places 2025/26 0.9 per place 256 first choices 285 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 287 first choices 284 places
First preferences per place at Ormiston Victory Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 287 first preferences for 284 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ormiston Victory Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 153 148 148 0.97
2016/17 193 180 180 0.93
2017/18 224 214 214 0.96
2018/19 240 246 224 1.02
2019/20 236 267 231 1.13
2020/21 215 274 206 1.27
2021/22 203 214 195 1.05
2022/23 258 246 246 0.95
2023/24 288 268 266 0.93
2024/25 280 291 275 1.04
2025/26 285 256 256 0.9
2026/27 284 287 272 1.01

Places offered

284

in 2026/27

Named first choice

287

400 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.8%

272 of 287

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 284 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

1,431

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,295

90.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

136

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Victory 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 Victory Academy reported 136 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.5% 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 Victory Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,250 places 831 on roll 2011/12 910 places 806 on roll 2012/13 910 places 787 on roll 2013/14 1,250 places 760 on roll 2014/15 1,250 places 783 on roll 2015/16 1,250 places 835 on roll 2016/17 1,250 places 894 on roll 2017/18 1,250 places 980 on roll 2018/19 1,179 places 1,067 on roll 2020/21 1,249 places 1,272 on roll 2021/22 1,249 places 1,256 on roll 2022/23 1,249 places 1,314 on roll 2023/24 1,700 places 1,405 on roll 2024/25 1,631 places 1,462 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 NR5 0PX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136186).

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.