School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kesgrave High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 52 families who named Kesgrave High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 294 and 338 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

338 first preferences for 294 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kesgrave High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Kesgrave 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

Kesgrave High 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 Kesgrave 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 1.02 per place 313 first choices 308 places 2016/17 1.03 per place 318 first choices 308 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 288 first choices 308 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 291 first choices 308 places 2019/20 1.05 per place 324 first choices 308 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 300 first choices 308 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 284 first choices 308 places 2022/23 1.01 per place 310 first choices 308 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 313 first choices 308 places 2024/25 1 per place 299 first choices 298 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 275 first choices 303 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 338 first choices 294 places
First preferences per place at Kesgrave High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 338 first preferences for 294 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kesgrave 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
2015/16 308 313 290 1.02
2016/17 308 318 303 1.03
2017/18 308 288 284 0.94
2018/19 308 291 285 0.94
2019/20 308 324 288 1.05
2020/21 308 300 287 0.97
2021/22 308 284 284 0.92
2022/23 308 310 297 1.01
2023/24 308 313 298 1.02
2024/25 298 299 292 1
2025/26 303 275 271 0.91
2026/27 294 338 286 1.15

Places offered

294

in 2026/27

Named first choice

338

600 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.6%

286 of 338

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 294 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

1,541

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

382

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 Kesgrave 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 Kesgrave High 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Kesgrave High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,750 places 1,730 on roll 2012/13 1,733 places 1,708 on roll 2013/14 1,733 places 1,719 on roll 2014/15 1,733 places 1,748 on roll 2015/16 1,733 places 1,808 on roll 2016/17 1,764 places 1,825 on roll 2017/18 1,928 places 1,817 on roll 2018/19 1,922 places 1,837 on roll 2020/21 1,922 places 1,846 on roll 2021/22 1,922 places 1,873 on roll 2022/23 1,922 places 1,874 on roll 2023/24 1,922 places 1,846 on roll 2024/25 1,922 places 1,855 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 IP5 2PB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136969).

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.