School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sewell Park Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Sewell Park Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 128 put it first and 124 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Norfolk actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

4

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

128 first preferences for 134 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sewell Park Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Sewell Park 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

Sewell Park Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 11 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Sewell Park Academy, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.7 per place 74 first choices 105 places 2017/18 0.85 per place 72 first choices 85 places 2018/19 0.58 per place 75 first choices 129 places 2019/20 0.78 per place 107 first choices 137 places 2020/21 0.68 per place 109 first choices 160 places 2021/22 0.69 per place 110 first choices 159 places 2022/23 0.75 per place 118 first choices 157 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 179 first choices 164 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 146 first choices 155 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 184 first choices 150 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 128 first choices 134 places
First preferences per place at Sewell Park Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 128 first preferences for 134 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sewell Park Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 105 74 74 0.7
2017/18 85 72 72 0.85
2018/19 129 75 75 0.58
2019/20 137 107 107 0.78
2020/21 160 109 109 0.68
2021/22 159 110 110 0.69
2022/23 157 118 118 0.75
2023/24 164 179 160 1.09
2024/25 155 146 145 0.94
2025/26 150 184 145 1.23
2026/27 134 128 124 0.96

Places offered

134

in 2026/27

Named first choice

128

270 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.9%

124 of 128

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 130 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

777

103.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

27

reported as full or beyond

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 Sewell Park 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 Sewell Park Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Sewell Park Academy from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,500 places 507 on roll 2016/17 1,500 places 485 on roll 2017/18 1,500 places 470 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 474 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 601 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 646 on roll 2022/23 1,199 places 717 on roll 2023/24 750 places 772 on roll 2024/25 750 places 777 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 NR3 4BX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142058).

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.