School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Newark Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 33 families who named The Newark Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 207 and 224 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Nottinghamshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

1.08

first choices for every place available

224 first preferences for 207 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Newark Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Newark 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 Nottinghamshire 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 Nottinghamshire, 24.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 340 of 1,374 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 Nottinghamshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Nottinghamshire 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

The Newark Academy turned first-choice families away in 7 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 The Newark Academy, 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 0.87 per place 105 first choices 121 places 2016/17 0.76 per place 126 first choices 165 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 154 first choices 156 places 2018/19 1 per place 169 first choices 169 places 2019/20 1.1 per place 230 first choices 210 places 2020/21 1.21 per place 254 first choices 210 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 222 first choices 210 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 229 first choices 210 places 2023/24 1.3 per place 272 first choices 209 places 2024/25 0.95 per place 222 first choices 234 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 230 first choices 202 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 224 first choices 207 places
First preferences per place at The Newark Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 224 first preferences for 207 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Newark Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 121 105 105 0.87
2016/17 165 126 126 0.76
2017/18 156 154 153 0.99
2018/19 169 169 169 1
2019/20 210 230 208 1.1
2020/21 210 254 203 1.21
2021/22 210 222 197 1.06
2022/23 210 229 204 1.09
2023/24 209 272 202 1.3
2024/25 234 222 220 0.95
2025/26 202 230 200 1.14
2026/27 207 224 191 1.08

Places offered

207

in 2026/27

Named first choice

224

485 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.3%

191 of 224

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 207 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 138872.

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

1,260

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,061

84.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

199

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

120

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 The Newark 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 The Newark Academy reported 199 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84.2% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Newark Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,638 places 804 on roll 2013/14 1,638 places 740 on roll 2014/15 1,028 places 666 on roll 2015/16 1,233 places 617 on roll 2016/17 1,233 places 608 on roll 2017/18 1,233 places 639 on roll 2018/19 1,170 places 765 on roll 2020/21 1,110 places 1,024 on roll 2021/22 1,110 places 1,066 on roll 2022/23 1,110 places 1,117 on roll 2023/24 1,170 places 1,136 on roll 2024/25 1,380 places 1,138 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
Nottinghamshire

Postcode NG24 3AL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144489).

Other contested secondary schools in Nottinghamshire

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.