School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Newfield Secondary School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Newfield Secondary School as their first choice did not get a place: 193 put it first and 192 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

193 first preferences for 225 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Newfield Secondary School

There is no published appeal success rate for Newfield 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 Sheffield 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 Sheffield, 26.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 181 of 672 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 Sheffield.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sheffield 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

Newfield Secondary School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Newfield Secondary School, 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 0.76 per place 160 first choices 210 places 2016/17 0.84 per place 176 first choices 209 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 195 first choices 210 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 197 first choices 209 places 2019/20 1 per place 220 first choices 220 places 2020/21 1.17 per place 248 first choices 212 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 206 first choices 211 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 243 first choices 216 places 2023/24 1.04 per place 224 first choices 215 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 224 first choices 220 places 2025/26 1.25 per place 267 first choices 214 places 2026/27 0.86 per place 193 first choices 225 places
First preferences per place at Newfield Secondary School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 193 first preferences for 225 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Newfield 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
2015/16 210 160 160 0.76
2016/17 209 176 176 0.84
2017/18 210 195 181 0.93
2018/19 209 197 187 0.94
2019/20 220 220 204 1
2020/21 212 248 199 1.17
2021/22 211 206 190 0.98
2022/23 216 243 193 1.12
2023/24 215 224 193 1.04
2024/25 220 224 198 1.02
2025/26 214 267 204 1.25
2026/27 225 193 192 0.86

Places offered

225

in 2026/27

Named first choice

193

439 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.5%

192 of 193

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 225 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,058

100.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

8

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

0

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 Newfield 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 Newfield Secondary 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Newfield Secondary School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 1,050 places 902 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 901 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 933 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 949 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,013 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,037 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,044 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,036 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,045 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,043 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,058 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
Sheffield

Postcode S8 9JP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140821).

Other contested secondary schools in Sheffield

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.