School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Sir John Leman High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Sir John Leman High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 265 and 277 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

277 first preferences for 265 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Sir John Leman High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Sir John Leman 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

Sir John Leman High School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Sir John Leman 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 1.19 per place 297 first choices 250 places 2016/17 1.13 per place 270 first choices 239 places 2017/18 1.22 per place 292 first choices 239 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 298 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 279 first choices 249 places 2020/21 1.37 per place 327 first choices 238 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 244 first choices 251 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 256 first choices 250 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 283 first choices 268 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 269 first choices 266 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 227 first choices 233 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 277 first choices 265 places
First preferences per place at Sir John Leman High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 277 first preferences for 265 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Sir John Leman 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
2015/16 250 297 246 1.19
2016/17 239 270 228 1.13
2017/18 239 292 234 1.22
2018/19 240 298 238 1.24
2019/20 249 279 245 1.12
2020/21 238 327 238 1.37
2021/22 251 244 240 0.97
2022/23 250 256 250 1.02
2023/24 268 283 264 1.06
2024/25 266 269 265 1.01
2025/26 233 227 227 0.97
2026/27 265 277 263 1.05

Places offered

265

in 2026/27

Named first choice

277

419 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.9%

263 of 277

Offers to families outside the council

5%

13 of 265 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,263

105.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

63

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

185

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 Sir John Leman 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 Sir John Leman 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 Sir John Leman High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,380 places 1,283 on roll 2012/13 1,387 places 1,448 on roll 2013/14 1,378 places 1,311 on roll 2014/15 1,368 places 1,331 on roll 2015/16 1,406 places 1,346 on roll 2016/17 1,411 places 1,364 on roll 2017/18 1,476 places 1,373 on roll 2018/19 1,476 places 1,397 on roll 2020/21 1,385 places 1,446 on roll 2021/22 1,385 places 1,419 on roll 2022/23 1,385 places 1,394 on roll 2023/24 1,385 places 1,426 on roll 2024/25 1,385 places 1,424 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 NR34 9PG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137055).

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.