School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Farlingaye High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 2 families who named Farlingaye High School as their first choice did not get a place: 282 put it first and 280 of them were offered one.

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

2

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

282 first preferences for 293 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Farlingaye High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Farlingaye High 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

Farlingaye High School turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Farlingaye High 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 1.18 per place 343 first choices 290 places 2016/17 1.08 per place 320 first choices 296 places 2017/18 1.22 per place 363 first choices 297 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 330 first choices 298 places 2019/20 1.22 per place 376 first choices 307 places 2020/21 1.25 per place 386 first choices 308 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 325 first choices 308 places 2022/23 1 per place 285 first choices 286 places 2023/24 1.05 per place 320 first choices 306 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 308 first choices 299 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 292 first choices 295 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 282 first choices 293 places
First preferences per place at Farlingaye High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 282 first preferences for 293 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Farlingaye High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 290 343 289 1.18
2016/17 296 320 293 1.08
2017/18 297 363 297 1.22
2018/19 298 330 293 1.11
2019/20 307 376 305 1.22
2020/21 308 386 308 1.25
2021/22 308 325 304 1.06
2022/23 286 285 285 1
2023/24 306 320 303 1.05
2024/25 299 308 296 1.03
2025/26 295 292 292 0.99
2026/27 293 282 280 0.96

Places offered

293

in 2026/27

Named first choice

282

482 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.3%

280 of 282

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 293 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

1,540

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,522

98.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

435

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 Farlingaye High 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 Farlingaye High School reported 18 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.8% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Farlingaye High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,934 places 1,909 on roll 2012/13 1,885 places 1,835 on roll 2013/14 1,900 places 1,867 on roll 2014/15 1,888 places 1,874 on roll 2015/16 1,986 places 1,938 on roll 2016/17 1,986 places 1,922 on roll 2017/18 1,975 places 1,913 on roll 2018/19 1,975 places 1,912 on roll 2020/21 1,975 places 1,950 on roll 2021/22 1,975 places 1,927 on roll 2022/23 2,009 places 1,916 on roll 2023/24 1,975 places 1,908 on roll 2024/25 1,975 places 1,887 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 IP12 4JX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136834).

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.