School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bede Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 43 families who named Bede Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 131 and 174 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Northumberland actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1.33

first choices for every place available

174 first preferences for 131 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bede Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bede 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 Northumberland 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 Northumberland, 42.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 113 of 265 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 Northumberland.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Northumberland 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

Bede Academy turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 8 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Bede Academy, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.99 per place 127 first choices 128 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 150 first choices 134 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 160 first choices 136 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 164 first choices 134 places 2023/24 1.47 per place 197 first choices 134 places 2024/25 1.57 per place 191 first choices 122 places 2025/26 1.18 per place 152 first choices 129 places 2026/27 1.33 per place 174 first choices 131 places
First preferences per place at Bede Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 174 first preferences for 131 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bede Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 128 127 127 0.99
2020/21 134 150 134 1.12
2021/22 136 160 136 1.18
2022/23 134 164 133 1.22
2023/24 134 197 133 1.47
2024/25 122 191 122 1.57
2025/26 129 152 129 1.18
2026/27 131 174 131 1.33

Places offered

131

in 2026/27

Named first choice

174

239 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.3%

131 of 174

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 131 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

1,750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,726

98.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

24

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

377

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 Bede 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 Bede Academy reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.6% 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 Bede Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,100 2,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,860 places 1,285 on roll 2010/11 1,860 places 1,386 on roll 2011/12 1,748 places 1,494 on roll 2012/13 1,748 places 1,601 on roll 2013/14 1,748 places 1,681 on roll 2014/15 1,748 places 1,672 on roll 2015/16 1,748 places 1,697 on roll 2016/17 1,748 places 1,696 on roll 2017/18 1,748 places 1,686 on roll 2018/19 1,748 places 1,732 on roll 2020/21 1,748 places 1,820 on roll 2021/22 2,000 places 1,874 on roll 2022/23 2,000 places 1,914 on roll 2023/24 2,000 places 1,947 on roll 2024/25 2,127 places 1,949 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Bede Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Bede Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
22 December 2017 Arrangements did not comply case reference number REF3337

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Northumberland

Postcode NE24 2SY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135619).

Other contested secondary schools in Northumberland

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.