School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Burnside College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Burnside College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 232 and 247 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

247 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Burnside College

There is no published appeal success rate for Burnside College, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for North Tyneside 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 North Tyneside, 23.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 78 of 333 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 North Tyneside.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not North Tyneside 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

Burnside College 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 Burnside College, 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 0.96 per place 135 first choices 141 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 192 first choices 214 places 2017/18 0.82 per place 181 first choices 220 places 2018/19 0.78 per place 148 first choices 189 places 2019/20 0.63 per place 136 first choices 215 places 2020/21 0.6 per place 106 first choices 177 places 2021/22 0.83 per place 165 first choices 199 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 177 first choices 202 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 183 first choices 201 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 173 first choices 192 places 2025/26 0.89 per place 178 first choices 199 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 247 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at Burnside College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 247 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Burnside College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 141 135 135 0.96
2016/17 214 192 192 0.9
2017/18 220 181 181 0.82
2018/19 189 148 148 0.78
2019/20 215 136 134 0.63
2020/21 177 106 106 0.6
2021/22 199 165 165 0.83
2022/23 202 177 176 0.88
2023/24 201 183 179 0.91
2024/25 192 173 172 0.9
2025/26 199 178 177 0.89
2026/27 232 247 213 1.06

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

247

369 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.2%

213 of 247

Offers to families outside the council

3%

7 of 232 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

1,248

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

886

71% of capacity

Unfilled places

362

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

278

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 Burnside College 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 Burnside College reported 362 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 71% 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 Burnside College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,526 places 1,498 on roll 2010/11 1,526 places 1,489 on roll 2011/12 1,526 places 1,377 on roll 2012/13 1,526 places 1,341 on roll 2013/14 1,526 places 1,291 on roll 2014/15 1,526 places 1,247 on roll 2015/16 1,526 places 1,167 on roll 2016/17 1,526 places 1,162 on roll 2017/18 1,526 places 1,075 on roll 2018/19 1,526 places 1,044 on roll 2020/21 1,526 places 1,003 on roll 2021/22 1,526 places 963 on roll 2022/23 1,526 places 1,001 on roll 2023/24 1,526 places 993 on roll 2024/25 1,526 places 944 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North Tyneside

Postcode NE28 7LQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 108640).

Other contested secondary schools in North Tyneside

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.