School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Breckland School?

In 2026/27, Breckland School offered 99 places and 95 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.96

first choices for every place available

95 first preferences for 99 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Breckland School

There is no published appeal success rate for Breckland 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 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

Breckland School 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 Breckland 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 1 per place 74 first choices 74 places 2016/17 1 per place 98 first choices 98 places 2017/18 1.01 per place 101 first choices 100 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 96 first choices 98 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 99 first choices 98 places 2020/21 1.06 per place 106 first choices 100 places 2021/22 1.18 per place 136 first choices 115 places 2022/23 1.22 per place 145 first choices 119 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 110 first choices 118 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 159 first choices 118 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 116 first choices 115 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 95 first choices 99 places
First preferences per place at Breckland School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 95 first preferences for 99 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Breckland 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 74 74 74 1
2016/17 98 98 98 1
2017/18 100 101 100 1.01
2018/19 98 96 96 0.98
2019/20 98 99 98 1.01
2020/21 100 106 99 1.06
2021/22 115 136 115 1.18
2022/23 119 145 118 1.22
2023/24 118 110 110 0.93
2024/25 118 159 117 1.35
2025/26 115 116 111 1.01
2026/27 99 95 95 0.96

Places offered

99

in 2026/27

Named first choice

95

131 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

95 of 95

Offers to families outside the council

13%

13 of 98 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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

606

101% of capacity

Over its capacity by

6

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 Breckland 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 Breckland 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Breckland School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 500 places 225 on roll 2013/14 500 places 309 on roll 2014/15 500 places 390 on roll 2015/16 500 places 418 on roll 2016/17 500 places 447 on roll 2017/18 514 places 468 on roll 2018/19 514 places 489 on roll 2020/21 514 places 520 on roll 2021/22 514 places 547 on roll 2022/23 596 places 564 on roll 2023/24 600 places 613 on roll 2024/25 600 places 606 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Suffolk

Postcode IP27 0PE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138250).

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.