School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Stowmarket High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Stowmarket High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 202 and 201 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

first choices for every place available

201 first preferences for 202 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Stowmarket High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Stowmarket 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

Stowmarket High School 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 Stowmarket 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 0.89 per place 153 first choices 171 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 148 first choices 152 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 108 first choices 114 places 2018/19 0.9 per place 134 first choices 149 places 2019/20 0.91 per place 144 first choices 159 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 165 first choices 176 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 186 first choices 190 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 183 first choices 188 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 219 first choices 190 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 180 first choices 185 places 2025/26 1.15 per place 214 first choices 186 places 2026/27 1 per place 201 first choices 202 places
First preferences per place at Stowmarket High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 201 first preferences for 202 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Stowmarket 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
2015/16 171 153 153 0.89
2016/17 152 148 148 0.97
2017/18 114 108 108 0.95
2018/19 149 134 134 0.9
2019/20 159 144 143 0.91
2020/21 176 165 165 0.94
2021/22 190 186 186 0.98
2022/23 188 183 183 0.97
2023/24 190 219 190 1.15
2024/25 185 180 180 0.97
2025/26 186 214 181 1.15
2026/27 202 201 200 1

Places offered

202

in 2026/27

Named first choice

201

320 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.5%

200 of 201

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 202 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 124818.

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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

892

99.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

8

across Years 7 to 11

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 Stowmarket 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 Stowmarket High School reported 8 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.1% 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 Stowmarket High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,203 places 1,050 on roll 2010/11 1,203 places 1,009 on roll 2011/12 1,203 places 960 on roll 2012/13 1,203 places 907 on roll 2013/14 1,203 places 815 on roll 2014/15 1,203 places 725 on roll 2015/16 1,376 places 966 on roll 2016/17 1,376 places 923 on roll 2017/18 1,376 places 857 on roll 2018/19 1,376 places 831 on roll 2020/21 1,125 places 833 on roll 2021/22 1,125 places 819 on roll 2022/23 1,125 places 868 on roll 2023/24 900 places 887 on roll 2024/25 900 places 892 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Suffolk

Postcode IP14 1QR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145055).

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.