School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kepier?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 35 families who named Kepier as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 257 and 285 put it first.

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

1.11

first choices for every place available

285 first preferences for 257 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kepier

There is no published appeal success rate for Kepier, 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

Kepier turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Kepier, 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 0.94 per place 134 first choices 142 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 138 first choices 149 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 179 first choices 196 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 200 first choices 208 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 176 first choices 195 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 204 first choices 223 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 193 first choices 208 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 244 first choices 256 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 260 first choices 255 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 205 first choices 211 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 238 first choices 224 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 285 first choices 257 places
First preferences per place at Kepier. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 285 first preferences for 257 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kepier, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 142 134 134 0.94
2016/17 149 138 138 0.93
2017/18 196 179 179 0.91
2018/19 208 200 193 0.96
2019/20 195 176 176 0.9
2020/21 223 204 202 0.91
2021/22 208 193 193 0.93
2022/23 256 244 242 0.95
2023/24 255 260 252 1.02
2024/25 211 205 204 0.97
2025/26 224 238 217 1.06
2026/27 257 285 250 1.11

Places offered

257

in 2026/27

Named first choice

285

372 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.7%

250 of 285

Offers to families outside the council

3%

7 of 257 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

1,150

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,138

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

12

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 Kepier 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 Kepier reported 12 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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 Kepier from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,368 places 1,044 on roll 2012/13 1,336 places 1,029 on roll 2013/14 1,368 places 1,024 on roll 2014/15 1,368 places 1,018 on roll 2015/16 1,368 places 1,001 on roll 2016/17 1,368 places 1,023 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,001 on roll 2018/19 1,150 places 1,017 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 1,059 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 1,082 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,108 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,131 on roll 2024/25 1,150 places 1,138 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
Sunderland

Postcode DH4 5BH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137262).

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.