School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bedlington Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Bedlington Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 158 and 158 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

first choices for every place available

158 first preferences for 158 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bedlington Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bedlington 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

Bedlington 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 Bedlington 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 1.01 per place 115 first choices 114 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 182 first choices 159 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 164 first choices 160 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 178 first choices 165 places 2023/24 1.21 per place 199 first choices 164 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 186 first choices 166 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 166 first choices 162 places 2026/27 1 per place 158 first choices 158 places
First preferences per place at Bedlington Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 158 first preferences for 158 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bedlington Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 114 115 114 1.01
2020/21 159 182 159 1.14
2021/22 160 164 160 1.02
2022/23 165 178 164 1.08
2023/24 164 199 164 1.21
2024/25 166 186 165 1.12
2025/26 162 166 161 1.02
2026/27 158 158 157 1

Places offered

158

in 2026/27

Named first choice

158

221 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.4%

157 of 158

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 158 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

751

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

167

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 Bedlington 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 Bedlington 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bedlington Academy from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 820 places 625 on roll 2018/19 820 places 670 on roll 2020/21 850 places 759 on roll 2021/22 850 places 783 on roll 2022/23 850 places 801 on roll 2023/24 850 places 804 on roll 2024/25 917 places 813 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Northumberland

Postcode NE22 7DS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144977).

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.