School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wymondham High Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Wymondham High Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 267 and 280 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

280 first preferences for 267 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wymondham High Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Wymondham High 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

Wymondham High Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Wymondham High 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 247 first choices 247 places 2016/17 0.89 per place 229 first choices 257 places 2017/18 0.96 per place 257 first choices 268 places 2018/19 0.86 per place 203 first choices 235 places 2019/20 0.89 per place 247 first choices 277 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 274 first choices 276 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 284 first choices 292 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 247 first choices 260 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 244 first choices 266 places 2024/25 0.87 per place 228 first choices 262 places 2025/26 1 per place 249 first choices 250 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 280 first choices 267 places
First preferences per place at Wymondham High Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 280 first preferences for 267 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wymondham High Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 247 247 223 1
2016/17 257 229 216 0.89
2017/18 268 257 244 0.96
2018/19 235 203 203 0.86
2019/20 277 247 244 0.89
2020/21 276 274 266 0.99
2021/22 292 284 278 0.97
2022/23 260 247 238 0.95
2023/24 266 244 236 0.92
2024/25 262 228 228 0.87
2025/26 250 249 239 1
2026/27 267 280 260 1.05

Places offered

267

in 2026/27

Named first choice

280

538 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.9%

260 of 280

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 267 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

1,257

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,343

106.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

86

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 Wymondham High 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 Wymondham High Academy 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wymondham High Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,529 places 1,618 on roll 2012/13 1,530 places 1,596 on roll 2013/14 1,551 places 1,554 on roll 2014/15 1,551 places 1,566 on roll 2015/16 1,550 places 1,584 on roll 2016/17 1,610 places 1,560 on roll 2017/18 1,550 places 1,559 on roll 2018/19 1,610 places 1,560 on roll 2020/21 1,700 places 1,703 on roll 2021/22 1,700 places 1,678 on roll 2022/23 1,700 places 1,626 on roll 2023/24 1,700 places 1,599 on roll 2024/25 1,657 places 1,632 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 NR18 0QT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137461).

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.