School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Open Academy?

In 2026/27, The Open Academy offered 96 places and 91 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.95

first choices for every place available

91 first preferences for 96 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Open Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Open 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

The Open 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 The Open 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 0.65 per place 82 first choices 126 places 2016/17 0.74 per place 74 first choices 100 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 104 first choices 110 places 2018/19 1.01 per place 121 first choices 120 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 114 first choices 107 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 111 first choices 107 places 2021/22 0.82 per place 80 first choices 98 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 115 first choices 107 places 2023/24 1.1 per place 114 first choices 104 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 94 first choices 100 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 110 first choices 100 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 91 first choices 96 places
First preferences per place at The Open Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 91 first preferences for 96 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Open Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 126 82 81 0.65
2016/17 100 74 74 0.74
2017/18 110 104 100 0.95
2018/19 120 121 99 1.01
2019/20 107 114 98 1.07
2020/21 107 111 94 1.04
2021/22 98 80 80 0.82
2022/23 107 115 105 1.07
2023/24 104 114 101 1.1
2024/25 100 94 94 0.94
2025/26 100 110 96 1.1
2026/27 96 91 91 0.95

Places offered

96

in 2026/27

Named first choice

91

250 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

91 of 91

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 92 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

850

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

515

60.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

335

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

42

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 Open 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 The Open Academy reported 335 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 60.6% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Open Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 950 places 476 on roll 2010/11 950 places 500 on roll 2011/12 900 places 534 on roll 2012/13 900 places 563 on roll 2013/14 900 places 588 on roll 2014/15 900 places 607 on roll 2015/16 900 places 636 on roll 2016/17 770 places 611 on roll 2017/18 770 places 594 on roll 2018/19 770 places 600 on roll 2020/21 770 places 592 on roll 2021/22 770 places 588 on roll 2022/23 770 places 587 on roll 2023/24 770 places 572 on roll 2024/25 892 places 555 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Norfolk

Postcode NR7 9DL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135650).

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.