School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 173 and 180 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

180 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form, 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

Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form, 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 0.95 per place 145 first choices 152 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 157 first choices 164 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 168 first choices 172 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 198 first choices 201 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 161 first choices 167 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 163 first choices 171 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 173 first choices 171 places 2022/23 1 per place 133 first choices 133 places 2023/24 0.96 per place 137 first choices 142 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 134 first choices 136 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 205 first choices 202 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 180 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 180 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 152 145 145 0.95
2016/17 164 157 157 0.96
2017/18 172 168 162 0.98
2018/19 201 198 198 0.99
2019/20 167 161 143 0.96
2020/21 171 163 161 0.95
2021/22 171 173 166 1.01
2022/23 133 133 133 1
2023/24 142 137 137 0.96
2024/25 136 134 134 0.99
2025/26 202 205 200 1.01
2026/27 173 180 172 1.04

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

180

277 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.6%

172 of 180

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 173 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

850

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

795

93.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

55

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

296

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 Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form 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 Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form reported 55 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.5% 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 Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,136 places 1,119 on roll 2012/13 1,136 places 1,114 on roll 2013/14 1,136 places 1,100 on roll 2014/15 1,136 places 1,099 on roll 2015/16 1,136 places 1,083 on roll 2016/17 1,136 places 1,095 on roll 2017/18 1,136 places 1,098 on roll 2018/19 1,170 places 1,126 on roll 2020/21 1,136 places 1,140 on roll 2021/22 1,136 places 1,149 on roll 2022/23 1,136 places 1,087 on roll 2023/24 1,136 places 1,020 on roll 2024/25 1,146 places 1,005 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 IP13 9HE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136782).

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.