School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wayland Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 6 families who named Wayland Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 137 and 140 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

140 first preferences for 137 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wayland Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Wayland 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

Wayland Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Wayland 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 1 per place 123 first choices 123 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 100 first choices 103 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 99 first choices 101 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 87 first choices 93 places 2019/20 0.89 per place 98 first choices 110 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 110 first choices 118 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 113 first choices 118 places 2022/23 0.94 per place 107 first choices 114 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 109 first choices 112 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 107 first choices 109 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 123 first choices 113 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 140 first choices 137 places
First preferences per place at Wayland Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 140 first preferences for 137 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wayland Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 123 123 122 1
2016/17 103 100 100 0.97
2017/18 101 99 99 0.98
2018/19 93 87 87 0.94
2019/20 110 98 98 0.89
2020/21 118 110 110 0.93
2021/22 118 113 113 0.96
2022/23 114 107 107 0.94
2023/24 112 109 109 0.97
2024/25 109 107 107 0.98
2025/26 113 123 105 1.09
2026/27 137 140 134 1.02

Places offered

137

in 2026/27

Named first choice

140

167 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.7%

134 of 140

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 137 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

708

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

555

78.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

153

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 Wayland 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 Wayland Academy reported 153 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 78.4% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wayland Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 738 places 698 on roll 2012/13 750 places 673 on roll 2013/14 900 places 665 on roll 2014/15 900 places 631 on roll 2015/16 900 places 600 on roll 2016/17 750 places 569 on roll 2017/18 750 places 548 on roll 2018/19 900 places 525 on roll 2020/21 900 places 516 on roll 2021/22 900 places 540 on roll 2022/23 750 places 573 on roll 2023/24 750 places 558 on roll 2024/25 708 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Norfolk

Postcode IP25 6BA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137949).

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.