School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 262 and 270 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Suffolk actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

1.03

first choices for every place available

270 first preferences for 262 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics

There is no published appeal success rate for Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Suffolk 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 Suffolk, 26.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 112 of 426 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 Suffolk.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Suffolk 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

Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.93 per place 180 first choices 194 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 253 first choices 258 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 275 first choices 260 places 2020/21 1 per place 261 first choices 260 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 306 first choices 270 places 2022/23 1.03 per place 276 first choices 269 places 2023/24 1.1 per place 297 first choices 270 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 297 first choices 268 places 2025/26 1.37 per place 287 first choices 209 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 270 first choices 262 places
First preferences per place at Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 270 first preferences for 262 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 194 180 180 0.93
2018/19 258 253 253 0.98
2019/20 260 275 255 1.06
2020/21 260 261 253 1
2021/22 270 306 268 1.13
2022/23 269 276 267 1.03
2023/24 270 297 269 1.1
2024/25 268 297 267 1.11
2025/26 209 287 209 1.37
2026/27 262 270 258 1.03

Places offered

262

in 2026/27

Named first choice

270

343 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.6%

258 of 270

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 262 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

1,266

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,253

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

13

across Years 7 to 11

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 Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics 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 Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics reported 13 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,266 places 747 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 710 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 803 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 941 on roll 2020/21 1,266 places 1,112 on roll 2021/22 1,266 places 1,214 on roll 2022/23 1,266 places 1,239 on roll 2023/24 1,266 places 1,256 on roll 2024/25 1,266 places 1,253 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

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. Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
24 July 2018 Arrangements did not comply ADA3459

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Suffolk

Postcode NR32 4PZ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142759).

Other contested secondary schools in Suffolk

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.