School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ponteland High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 40 families who named Ponteland High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 235 and 273 put it first.

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

1.16

first choices for every place available

273 first preferences for 235 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ponteland High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ponteland 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 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

Ponteland High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 8 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Ponteland High School, 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 1.24 per place 293 first choices 237 places 2020/21 1.46 per place 344 first choices 236 places 2021/22 1.2 per place 317 first choices 265 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 333 first choices 277 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 293 first choices 250 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 285 first choices 247 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 296 first choices 241 places 2026/27 1.16 per place 273 first choices 235 places
First preferences per place at Ponteland High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 273 first preferences for 235 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ponteland 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
2019/20 237 293 233 1.24
2020/21 236 344 236 1.46
2021/22 265 317 265 1.2
2022/23 277 333 274 1.2
2023/24 250 293 250 1.17
2024/25 247 285 247 1.15
2025/26 241 296 241 1.23
2026/27 235 273 233 1.16

Places offered

235

in 2026/27

Named first choice

273

507 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.3%

233 of 273

Offers to families outside the council

35%

83 of 235 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 122358.

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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,260

105% of capacity

Over its capacity by

60

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

425

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 Ponteland 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 Ponteland 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 Ponteland High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,145 places 1,107 on roll 2010/11 1,145 places 1,120 on roll 2011/12 1,140 places 1,106 on roll 2012/13 1,126 places 1,095 on roll 2013/14 1,126 places 1,101 on roll 2014/15 1,126 places 1,113 on roll 2015/16 1,126 places 1,092 on roll 2016/17 1,126 places 1,058 on roll 2017/18 1,129 places 1,050 on roll 2018/19 1,129 places 1,057 on roll 2020/21 1,600 places 1,578 on roll 2021/22 1,600 places 1,580 on roll 2022/23 1,600 places 1,583 on roll 2023/24 1,600 places 1,549 on roll 2024/25 1,625 places 1,538 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Northumberland

Postcode NE20 9EG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145783).

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.