School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Castle Manor Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Castle Manor Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 146 and 161 put it first.

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

1.10

first choices for every place available

161 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Castle Manor Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Castle Manor 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 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

Castle Manor Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Castle Manor 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 0.91 per place 92 first choices 101 places 2016/17 0.68 per place 74 first choices 109 places 2017/18 0.64 per place 86 first choices 134 places 2018/19 0.75 per place 106 first choices 142 places 2019/20 0.89 per place 134 first choices 150 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 125 first choices 139 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 158 first choices 150 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 132 first choices 133 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 145 first choices 149 places 2024/25 0.98 per place 146 first choices 149 places 2025/26 0.94 per place 133 first choices 142 places 2026/27 1.1 per place 161 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at Castle Manor Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 161 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Castle Manor Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 101 92 92 0.91
2016/17 109 74 74 0.68
2017/18 134 86 85 0.64
2018/19 142 106 106 0.75
2019/20 150 134 130 0.89
2020/21 139 125 125 0.9
2021/22 150 158 149 1.05
2022/23 133 132 132 0.99
2023/24 149 145 140 0.97
2024/25 149 146 146 0.98
2025/26 142 133 133 0.94
2026/27 146 161 136 1.1

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

161

265 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.5%

136 of 161

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 146 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

753

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

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 Castle Manor 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 Castle Manor Academy 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 Castle Manor Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,200 places 800 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 732 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 711 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 623 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 567 on roll 2017/18 750 places 567 on roll 2018/19 750 places 610 on roll 2020/21 750 places 676 on roll 2021/22 750 places 705 on roll 2022/23 750 places 740 on roll 2023/24 750 places 749 on roll 2024/25 750 places 753 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Suffolk

Postcode CB9 9JE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138162).

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.