School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at NCEA Duke's Secondary School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 2 families who named NCEA Duke's Secondary School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 170 and 171 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Northumberland actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 7 years of official figures.

1.01

first choices for every place available

171 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at NCEA Duke's Secondary School

There is no published appeal success rate for NCEA Duke's Secondary 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 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

NCEA Duke's Secondary School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 7 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at NCEA Duke's Secondary School, 2020/21 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 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2020/21 0.99 per place 160 first choices 161 places 2021/22 0.99 per place 173 first choices 174 places 2022/23 0.93 per place 176 first choices 190 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 191 first choices 189 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 221 first choices 190 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 203 first choices 187 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 171 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at NCEA Duke's Secondary School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 171 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at NCEA Duke's Secondary School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2020/21 161 160 160 0.99
2021/22 174 173 173 0.99
2022/23 190 176 175 0.93
2023/24 189 191 187 1.01
2024/25 190 221 189 1.16
2025/26 187 203 187 1.09
2026/27 170 171 169 1.01

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

171

215 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.8%

169 of 171

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 170 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

1,210

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

951

78.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

259

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 NCEA Duke's Secondary 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 NCEA Duke's Secondary School reported 259 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 78.6% 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 NCEA Duke's Secondary School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,500 3,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 2,980 places 2,379 on roll 2010/11 2,952 places 2,359 on roll 2011/12 2,770 places 2,154 on roll 2012/13 2,770 places 2,192 on roll 2013/14 2,770 places 2,119 on roll 2014/15 2,770 places 2,106 on roll 2015/16 2,770 places 2,123 on roll 2016/17 2,770 places 2,145 on roll 2017/18 2,770 places 2,164 on roll 2018/19 1,300 places 910 on roll 2020/21 1,300 places 945 on roll 2021/22 1,300 places 961 on roll 2022/23 1,300 places 1,009 on roll 2023/24 1,300 places 1,016 on roll 2024/25 1,460 places 1,034 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Northumberland

Postcode NE63 9FZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135886).

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.