School admission appeals in Suffolk
Suffolk heard 162 school admission appeals in 2026, and 36 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Suffolk as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Suffolk success rate has run 9.3 percentage points higher than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in Suffolk were upheld
175 of 609 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
246
by parents in Suffolk
Appeals heard by a panel
162
66% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
36
22.2% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
44.8% of the primary appeals heard in Suffolk were infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
In Suffolk, 11% of infant class size appeals were upheld (9 of 82 appeals heard in 2024–2026) against 9.4% across England. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in Suffolk
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Suffolk rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
Which appeals succeed in Suffolk
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 426 | 112 | 26.3% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 183 | 63 | 34.4% | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 82 | 9 | 11% | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in Suffolk, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Suffolk | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 318 | 77 | 24.2% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 270 | 78 | 28.9% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 279 | 90 | 32.3% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 210 | 58 | 27.6% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 345 | 80 | 23.2% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 222 | 66 | 29.7% | 19% |
| 2022 | 196 | 62 | 31.6% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 208 | 70 | 33.7% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 230 | 73 | 31.7% | 20% |
| 2025 | 217 | 66 | 30.4% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 162 | 36 | 22.2% | 18.5% |
How Suffolk compares
Success rate ranking
22 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
65 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 609 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Schools in Suffolk
Suffolk has 295 state-funded mainstream schools — 253 primary and 42 secondary. The largest concentrations are in Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Lowestoft and Woodbridge.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Suffolk schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 20 secondary and 71 primary schools in Suffolk →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| St Benedict's Catholic School | 167 | 239 | 1.43 |
| Northgate High School | 235 | 316 | 1.34 |
| Claydon High School | 148 | 179 | 1.21 |
| Kesgrave High School | 294 | 338 | 1.15 |
| Castle Manor Academy | 146 | 161 | 1.10 |
| Chantry Academy | 202 | 221 | 1.09 |
| Copleston High School | 319 | 345 | 1.08 |
| Hartismere School | 151 | 159 | 1.05 |
| Sir John Leman High School | 265 | 277 | 1.05 |
| Debenham High School | 141 | 146 | 1.04 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Saints' Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School, Lawshall | 28 | 47 | 1.68 |
| Exning Primary School | 30 | 49 | 1.63 |
| Sproughton Church of England Primary School | 14 | 22 | 1.57 |
| Snape Primary School | 13 | 20 | 1.54 |
| The Oaks Primary School | 58 | 88 | 1.52 |
| Birchwood Primary School | 29 | 42 | 1.45 |
| Rougham Church of England Primary School | 29 | 41 | 1.41 |
| Barnham Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School | 20 | 28 | 1.40 |
| Oulton Broad Primary School | 43 | 60 | 1.40 |
| Acton Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School | 30 | 41 | 1.37 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in Suffolk
Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 11 objections about schools in Suffolk, and found the arrangements did not comply in 9.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Great Heath Academy | 16 September 2025 | Complied |
| Pakefield Primary School | 18 October 2023 | Did not comply |
| Westbourne Academy | 29 August 2019 | Did not comply |
| Woods Loke Primary School | 14 August 2019 | Did not comply |
| Stoke High School - Ormiston Academy | 20 September 2018 | Did not comply |
| Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics | 24 July 2018 | Did not comply |
| Hartismere School | 19 November 2015 | Did not comply |
| St Louis Catholic Academy | 9 October 2015 | Did not comply |
| Ormiston Sudbury Academy | 23 September 2015 | Did not comply |
| All community schools in Suffolk | 1 June 2012 | Complied |
Suffolk does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.