School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Clement's High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named St Clement's High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 130 and 149 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

149 first preferences for 130 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Clement's High School

There is no published appeal success rate for St Clement's 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

St Clement's High School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 St Clement's 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 119 first choices 121 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 108 first choices 113 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 119 first choices 127 places 2018/19 1.25 per place 162 first choices 130 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 154 first choices 127 places 2020/21 1.06 per place 131 first choices 124 places 2021/22 1.11 per place 146 first choices 132 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 124 first choices 130 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 168 first choices 149 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 139 first choices 129 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 134 first choices 130 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 149 first choices 130 places
First preferences per place at St Clement's High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 149 first preferences for 130 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Clement's 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
2015/16 121 119 119 0.98
2016/17 113 108 108 0.96
2017/18 127 119 118 0.94
2018/19 130 162 128 1.25
2019/20 127 154 126 1.21
2020/21 124 131 118 1.06
2021/22 132 146 128 1.11
2022/23 130 124 124 0.95
2023/24 149 168 147 1.13
2024/25 129 139 125 1.08
2025/26 130 134 123 1.03
2026/27 130 149 130 1.15

Places offered

130

in 2026/27

Named first choice

149

205 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.2%

130 of 149

Offers to families outside the council

7%

9 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

682

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

704

103.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

22

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 St Clement's 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 St Clement's 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at St Clement's High School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 650 places 579 on roll 2014/15 650 places 551 on roll 2015/16 650 places 574 on roll 2016/17 650 places 591 on roll 2017/18 650 places 606 on roll 2018/19 650 places 630 on roll 2020/21 650 places 651 on roll 2021/22 650 places 664 on roll 2022/23 650 places 666 on roll 2023/24 650 places 690 on roll 2024/25 682 places 704 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 PE34 4LZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140557).

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.