School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Northgate High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 92 families who named Northgate High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 235 and 316 put it first.

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

1.34

first choices for every place available

316 first preferences for 235 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Northgate High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Northgate 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

Northgate High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Northgate 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 1.26 per place 302 first choices 240 places 2016/17 1.4 per place 348 first choices 248 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 325 first choices 272 places 2018/19 1.45 per place 353 first choices 243 places 2019/20 1.3 per place 320 first choices 246 places 2020/21 1.46 per place 348 first choices 238 places 2021/22 1.27 per place 317 first choices 250 places 2022/23 1.4 per place 340 first choices 242 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 288 first choices 248 places 2024/25 1.25 per place 303 first choices 242 places 2025/26 1.39 per place 333 first choices 240 places 2026/27 1.34 per place 316 first choices 235 places
First preferences per place at Northgate High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 316 first preferences for 235 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Northgate 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
2015/16 240 302 233 1.26
2016/17 248 348 241 1.4
2017/18 272 325 264 1.19
2018/19 243 353 233 1.45
2019/20 246 320 235 1.3
2020/21 238 348 232 1.46
2021/22 250 317 241 1.27
2022/23 242 340 240 1.4
2023/24 248 288 238 1.16
2024/25 242 303 238 1.25
2025/26 240 333 232 1.39
2026/27 235 316 224 1.34

Places offered

235

in 2026/27

Named first choice

316

741 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

70.9%

224 of 316

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 235 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

1,322

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,260

95.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

62

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

459

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 Northgate 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 Northgate High School reported 62 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.3% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Northgate High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,684 places 1,710 on roll 2010/11 1,684 places 1,708 on roll 2011/12 1,705 places 1,703 on roll 2012/13 1,732 places 1,731 on roll 2013/14 1,729 places 1,725 on roll 2014/15 1,696 places 1,672 on roll 2015/16 1,696 places 1,697 on roll 2016/17 1,789 places 1,676 on roll 2017/18 1,789 places 1,650 on roll 2018/19 1,719 places 1,673 on roll 2020/21 1,719 places 1,765 on roll 2021/22 1,719 places 1,773 on roll 2022/23 1,719 places 1,720 on roll 2023/24 1,719 places 1,706 on roll 2024/25 1,781 places 1,706 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Suffolk

Postcode IP4 3DL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 124840).

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.