School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Springwood High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 27 families who named Springwood High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 271 and 296 put it first.

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

1.09

first choices for every place available

296 first preferences for 271 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Springwood High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Springwood 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

Springwood High School 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 Springwood 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 1.18 per place 305 first choices 259 places 2016/17 1.12 per place 309 first choices 276 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 321 first choices 279 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 347 first choices 280 places 2019/20 1.4 per place 384 first choices 275 places 2020/21 1.22 per place 338 first choices 276 places 2021/22 1.14 per place 312 first choices 274 places 2022/23 1.25 per place 338 first choices 270 places 2023/24 1.1 per place 304 first choices 276 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 336 first choices 272 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 303 first choices 267 places 2026/27 1.09 per place 296 first choices 271 places
First preferences per place at Springwood High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 296 first preferences for 271 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Springwood 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
2015/16 259 305 258 1.18
2016/17 276 309 276 1.12
2017/18 279 321 278 1.15
2018/19 280 347 276 1.24
2019/20 275 384 268 1.4
2020/21 276 338 271 1.22
2021/22 274 312 259 1.14
2022/23 270 338 269 1.25
2023/24 276 304 255 1.1
2024/25 272 336 270 1.24
2025/26 267 303 258 1.13
2026/27 271 296 269 1.09

Places offered

271

in 2026/27

Named first choice

296

538 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.9%

269 of 296

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 271 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

1,316

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,433

108.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

117

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

520

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 Springwood 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 Springwood High School 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Springwood High School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,636 places 1,668 on roll 2011/12 1,679 places 1,625 on roll 2012/13 1,658 places 1,640 on roll 2013/14 1,703 places 1,699 on roll 2014/15 1,703 places 1,659 on roll 2015/16 1,790 places 1,666 on roll 2016/17 1,790 places 1,700 on roll 2017/18 1,790 places 1,721 on roll 2018/19 1,740 places 1,699 on roll 2020/21 1,740 places 1,819 on roll 2021/22 1,870 places 1,879 on roll 2022/23 1,870 places 1,860 on roll 2023/24 1,870 places 1,888 on roll 2024/25 1,836 places 1,959 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 PE30 4AW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136515).

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.