Secondary schools in Norfolk: every state secondary by area, with Ofsted and sixth form

There are 53 state-funded secondary schools in Norfolk. All are non-selective. Admissions go through Norfolk County Council on one common form, and the address you live at usually decides which school your child gets. This is the full list, grouped by area, with age range, sixth form, pupil numbers and the latest Ofsted outcome for each.

Norfolk has no grammar schools. Wymondham College, south of Wymondham, is the only state school in the county that boards; the teaching is free and parents pay only for boarding. The other 52 take day pupils only. Twenty-four run on to a sixth form; the rest stop at 16.

Two Ofsted frameworks are live at once. Schools inspected before early September 2024 may still carry a single-word grade: Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement or Inadequate. From September 2024 to November 2025 inspections gave no overall grade. Since 10 November 2025 the renewed framework grades each area separately on a five-point scale. Our tables give each school’s most recent inspection, whichever framework it falls under.

How a Norfolk secondary place is decided

You apply to Norfolk County Council on one common application form, academies included. Rank the schools in the order you want them. The council makes one offer, at the highest school on your list with a place for your child. There is nothing to gain by putting a school lower because you think you will not get in.

For September 2027 entry the deadline is 31 October 2026, and offers go out on 1 March 2027. These dates are set by the School Admissions Code and are the same across England.

Each school’s admission authority sets the rules for who gets in when the school is full. The council sets them for community schools; academies, foundation schools and voluntary aided schools write their own. Every policy admits children with an education, health and care plan naming the school first, then looked-after and previously looked-after children. After that the rules diverge. Some schools use a catchment area; some use named feeder primaries; most then rank remaining applicants by straight-line distance from the school.

Norfolk County Council’s online Schoolfinder lists, for every school, the admission policy for 2026/27 and 2027/28, the planned admission number, the feeder schools and whether the school was oversubscribed last September. Read the policy for the year your child starts before you offer on a house.

In-year admissions

If you arrive during the school year you make an in-year application through Norfolk County Council rather than the national round. The council tells you which schools have a place in the year group you need. A full school puts your child on its waiting list. The School Admissions Code requires that list to be ranked by the school’s oversubscription criteria, never by the date you applied. Our timeline for lining up a school place with a house move sets out the order to do things in.

School transport

Free home-to-school transport is set nationally. A child under 8 qualifies if the nearest suitable school is more than 2 miles from home. A child aged 8 or over qualifies if it is more than 3 miles. Children from low-income families have wider rules, and children with special educational needs or a disability can qualify at shorter distances.

In rural Norfolk the catchment school is often a bus ride away and the council runs or contracts the service. From Mulbarton to Hethersett Academy is around five miles by road, over the three-mile walking distance. If a school is outside walking distance but is not the nearest suitable school, free transport is not automatic.

How Ofsted grades schools now

Since 10 November 2025 Ofsted has inspected schools under report cards. There is no single overall grade. Each area is graded on a five-point scale: exceptional, strong standard, expected standard, needs attention, or urgent improvement. The areas are achievement, leadership and governance, inclusion, curriculum and teaching, attendance and behaviour, and personal development and wellbeing. Safeguarding is recorded separately as met or not met. Sixth forms are graded the same way. Ofsted says the new grades cannot be compared directly with the old.

Between September 2024 and November 2025 inspections also gave no overall grade. A school’s last single-word rating may therefore be several years old even where the school has been visited since. Hethersett Academy, rated Outstanding in January 2016, had an ungraded inspection in September 2022 that left that in place; no graded inspection has happened since. Read the latest report, not just the grade.

Norwich and the ring

The city schools and the three big suburban academies at Thorpe St Andrew, Sprowston and Taverham. Hellesdon High and Ormiston Victory sit on the Norwich side of the Broadland and South Norfolk boundary.

South Norfolk

Wymondham, Diss, Harleston and the Loddon to Poringland corridor. Hethersett is the catchment school for Cringleford and families along the A11.

Broadland and the north-east

Aylsham, Reepham and the Broads villages between the Bure and the coast. Aylsham High runs to 16 only, so sixth form is a bus to Sheringham, Norwich or Paston.

North Norfolk coast and market towns

The five secondaries on and behind the north coast. Holt has no state secondary; children there go to Sheringham High or to Gresham’s in the independent sector.

Breckland

Attleborough, Dereham, Thetford, Watton and Swaffham, with the villages on the Suffolk border. The sixth forms are Northgate and Neatherd in Dereham, Attleborough Academy, Diss High over the border, and the Thetford Academy.

King’s Lynn and west Norfolk

Three secondaries in King’s Lynn and five more out in the villages, at Downham Market, Hunstanton, Litcham, Terrington St Clement and West Walton. Springwood is the only Lynn school with a sixth form.

Great Yarmouth

Six schools between Caister, Gorleston and Martham. None run a sixth form on site; all send sixth-formers on to East Norfolk Sixth Form College at Gorleston or to City College Norwich.

Sixth form options

Twenty-four of the 53 state secondaries have a sixth form on site. The rest run from 11 to 16. Their pupils move on either to a sixth-form or further education college, or to a sixth form at a neighbouring school.

The two full further education colleges are City College Norwich on Ipswich Road and East Norfolk Sixth Form College on Church Lane in Gorleston. City College Norwich has run Paston College in North Walsham since 2017. West Suffolk College’s sixth-form provision is the natural route from Thetford and Diss for students who do not stay on at their 11-to-18 school. Wymondham College’s sixth form takes 95 boarders and 120 day students into Year 12. University Technical College Norfolk on the Norwich Research Park admits from 14 and specialises in engineering and computing.

Special educational needs

If your child has an education, health and care plan, the plan names the school and that school is required to admit the child, ahead of every other applicant. The Norfolk SEND team is the first stop, not the school’s own admissions office, because the council leads the plan review.

Norfolk’s special schools, listed in our schools reference, include The Clare School, The Parkside School and Harford Manor School in Norwich, Sidestrand Hall near Cromer, Fred Nicholson School in Swaffham, John Grant School at Caister-on-Sea, and Chapel Green School at Old Buckenham near Attleborough. Mainstream support varies. The school’s SEND co-ordinator is the person to ask when you visit.

Plan the move

How we produced this guide

The 53 schools, with their towns, age ranges, trusts, pupil numbers and capacities, come from the Department for Education’s Get Information about Schools register. We filtered to open state-funded schools in the Norfolk local authority with a secondary phase and read the register on 2 October 2026. Inspection outcomes and dates come from Ofsted’s monthly management information, latest-inspections edition.

For schools inspected under the report-card framework since 10 November 2025 we quote the three areas most parents ask about first: achievement, leadership and governance, and inclusion. Fees and admission numbers for Wymondham College are from the college’s published 2026/27 schedule and admissions policy. Admission deadlines and waiting-list rules are set by the School Admissions Code. Home-to-school transport rules are set by sections 508B and 509AA of the Education Act 1996. The Hethersett Academy distance figure is from Norfolk County Council’s Schoolfinder.