School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Norham High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 62 families who named Norham High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 78 and 139 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.

1.78

first choices for every place available

139 first preferences for 78 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Norham High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Norham High 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 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

Norham High School turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Norham High School, 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 47 first choices 47 places 2016/17 0.65 per place 45 first choices 69 places 2017/18 0.74 per place 54 first choices 73 places 2018/19 0.62 per place 43 first choices 69 places 2019/20 0.38 per place 41 first choices 108 places 2020/21 0.33 per place 28 first choices 86 places 2021/22 0.54 per place 43 first choices 79 places 2022/23 0.71 per place 60 first choices 84 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 65 first choices 64 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 97 first choices 96 places 2025/26 1.59 per place 138 first choices 87 places 2026/27 1.78 per place 139 first choices 78 places
First preferences per place at Norham High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 139 first preferences for 78 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Norham High School, 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 47 47 47 1
2016/17 69 45 45 0.65
2017/18 73 54 54 0.74
2018/19 69 43 43 0.62
2019/20 108 41 41 0.38
2020/21 86 28 28 0.33
2021/22 79 43 43 0.54
2022/23 84 60 59 0.71
2023/24 64 65 61 1.02
2024/25 96 97 94 1.01
2025/26 87 138 85 1.59
2026/27 78 139 77 1.78

Places offered

78

in 2026/27

Named first choice

139

216 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

55.4%

77 of 139

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 78 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

450

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

450

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

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 Norham High 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 Norham High School 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Norham High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 895 places 613 on roll 2010/11 895 places 550 on roll 2011/12 895 places 502 on roll 2012/13 895 places 462 on roll 2013/14 895 places 425 on roll 2014/15 450 places 384 on roll 2015/16 450 places 338 on roll 2016/17 450 places 325 on roll 2017/18 450 places 324 on roll 2018/19 450 places 316 on roll 2020/21 450 places 311 on roll 2021/22 450 places 350 on roll 2022/23 450 places 369 on roll 2023/24 450 places 420 on roll 2024/25 450 places 450 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 NE29 7BU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 108628).

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.