School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Castle View Enterprise Academy?

In 2026/27, Castle View Enterprise Academy offered 196 places and 190 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.97

first choices for every place available

190 first preferences for 196 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Castle View Enterprise Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Castle View Enterprise Academy, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Sunderland 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 Sunderland, 77.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 189 of 244 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 Sunderland.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sunderland 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

Castle View Enterprise Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Castle View Enterprise Academy, 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 0.98 per place 133 first choices 136 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 155 first choices 158 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 193 first choices 195 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 223 first choices 200 places 2019/20 1.14 per place 240 first choices 210 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 217 first choices 208 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 206 first choices 210 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 231 first choices 207 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 233 first choices 205 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 210 first choices 204 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 183 first choices 188 places 2026/27 0.97 per place 190 first choices 196 places
First preferences per place at Castle View Enterprise Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 190 first preferences for 196 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Castle View Enterprise Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 136 133 133 0.98
2016/17 158 155 155 0.98
2017/18 195 193 192 0.99
2018/19 200 223 200 1.11
2019/20 210 240 208 1.14
2020/21 208 217 208 1.04
2021/22 210 206 204 0.98
2022/23 207 231 206 1.12
2023/24 205 233 203 1.14
2024/25 204 210 203 1.03
2025/26 188 183 183 0.97
2026/27 196 190 190 0.97

Places offered

196

in 2026/27

Named first choice

190

228 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

190 of 190

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 195 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,017

96.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

33

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 Castle View Enterprise Academy 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 Castle View Enterprise Academy reported 33 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.9% 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 Castle View Enterprise Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 900 places 801 on roll 2010/11 900 places 778 on roll 2011/12 900 places 784 on roll 2012/13 900 places 752 on roll 2013/14 900 places 736 on roll 2014/15 900 places 713 on roll 2015/16 900 places 715 on roll 2016/17 915 places 721 on roll 2017/18 935 places 767 on roll 2018/19 965 places 828 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 971 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,003 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,013 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,030 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,017 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
Sunderland

Postcode SR5 3DX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135818).

Other contested secondary schools in Sunderland

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.