School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Gateway Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 38 families who named The Gateway Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 208 and 234 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

234 first preferences for 208 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Gateway Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Gateway 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 Thurrock 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 Thurrock, 10.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 30 of 274 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 Thurrock.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Thurrock 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

The Gateway Academy 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 The Gateway 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 205 first choices 209 places 2016/17 1.05 per place 218 first choices 207 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 204 first choices 209 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 185 first choices 210 places 2019/20 0.67 per place 159 first choices 238 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 202 first choices 215 places 2021/22 0.86 per place 161 first choices 188 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 207 first choices 209 places 2023/24 0.85 per place 179 first choices 210 places 2024/25 1 per place 209 first choices 209 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 221 first choices 205 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 234 first choices 208 places
First preferences per place at The Gateway Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 234 first preferences for 208 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Gateway Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 209 205 190 0.98
2016/17 207 218 195 1.05
2017/18 209 204 188 0.98
2018/19 210 185 183 0.88
2019/20 238 159 159 0.67
2020/21 215 202 186 0.94
2021/22 188 161 159 0.86
2022/23 209 207 195 0.99
2023/24 210 179 164 0.85
2024/25 209 209 186 1
2025/26 205 221 189 1.08
2026/27 208 234 196 1.12

Places offered

208

in 2026/27

Named first choice

234

433 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

83.8%

196 of 234

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 208 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

1,390

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,038

74.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

352

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 The Gateway 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 The Gateway Academy reported 352 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 74.7% 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 The Gateway Academy 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 1,100 places 903 on roll 2010/11 1,100 places 935 on roll 2011/12 1,100 places 929 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 939 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 990 on roll 2014/15 990 places 979 on roll 2015/16 990 places 978 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 988 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 1,022 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 1,010 on roll 2020/21 1,090 places 1,065 on roll 2021/22 1,095 places 1,069 on roll 2022/23 1,100 places 1,080 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 1,061 on roll 2024/25 1,390 places 1,038 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Gateway Academy has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in each of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Gateway Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
1 August 2013 Arrangements did not comply ADA2444
7 February 2013 Arrangements did not comply ADA2398

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Thurrock

Postcode RM16 4LU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 133114).

Other contested secondary schools in Thurrock

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.