School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England School)?

In 2026/27, The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England School) offered 29 places and 28 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Norfolk actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 4 years of official figures.

0.97

first choices for every place available

28 first preferences for 29 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England School)

There is no published appeal success rate for The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England 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

The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England School) turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 4 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England School), 2023/24 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 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2023/24 1 per place 55 first choices 55 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 51 first choices 53 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 39 first choices 38 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 28 first choices 29 places
First preferences per place at The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England School). Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 28 first preferences for 29 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England School), by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2023/24 55 55 54 1
2024/25 53 51 51 0.96
2025/26 38 39 38 1.03
2026/27 29 28 28 0.97

Places offered

29

in 2026/27

Named first choice

28

54 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

28 of 28

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 29 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

920

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

825

89.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

95

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 The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England 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 The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England School) reported 95 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 89.7% 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, 2022/23 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Harleston Sancroft Academy (a 3-16 Church of England School) from 2022/23 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 22/23 23/24 24/25 2022/23 921 places 864 on roll 2023/24 921 places 851 on roll 2024/25 920 places 825 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Norfolk

Postcode IP20 9DD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 149197).

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.