School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Roundhay School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 216 families who named Roundhay School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 232 and 444 put it first.

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

1.91

first choices for every place available

444 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Roundhay School

There is no published appeal success rate for Roundhay School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Leeds 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 Leeds, 17.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 288 of 1,685 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 Leeds.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Leeds 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

Roundhay School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Roundhay School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 2.22 per place 542 first choices 244 places 2016/17 2.37 per place 578 first choices 244 places 2017/18 1.84 per place 545 first choices 297 places 2018/19 1.95 per place 578 first choices 297 places 2019/20 2.18 per place 513 first choices 235 places 2020/21 1.88 per place 448 first choices 238 places 2021/22 2.2 per place 470 first choices 214 places 2022/23 1.89 per place 443 first choices 234 places 2023/24 2.09 per place 494 first choices 236 places 2024/25 1.93 per place 457 first choices 237 places 2025/26 1.92 per place 454 first choices 236 places 2026/27 1.91 per place 444 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at Roundhay School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 444 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Roundhay School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 244 542 241 2.22
2016/17 244 578 243 2.37
2017/18 297 545 289 1.84
2018/19 297 578 290 1.95
2019/20 235 513 232 2.18
2020/21 238 448 227 1.88
2021/22 214 470 205 2.2
2022/23 234 443 224 1.89
2023/24 236 494 230 2.09
2024/25 237 457 227 1.93
2025/26 236 454 231 1.92
2026/27 232 444 228 1.91

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

444

1,523 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

51.4%

228 of 444

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 232 offers

How close you had to live

Roundhay School filled its places in 2026, and 1,576m — 0.98 miles — is how far away the last child to be offered a place lived. They were admitted under criterion 4 — In defined catchment area, which is numbered in the school's own admission arrangements for that year.

Last place offered at

0.98 mi

1,576 metres, 2026

Under criterion

4

In defined catchment area

This is not a line you passed or failed

A panel cannot refuse your appeal because you live beyond this distance, and cannot allow it because you live inside. The cut-off describes how the arrangements were applied to last year's applicants. At the first stage the panel asks whether the arrangements were lawful and applied to you correctly; at the second it weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil. Neither question has a distance in it. Families further out than this figure win appeals, and families inside it did not need one.

It also changes every year, because it is set by who happened to apply, not by a boundary the school draws. Last year's figure does not tell you this year's.

Leeds Council, allocation statistics for 2026. Source document. Published under the Open Government Licence. Cut-off distances are not a statutory publication — the School Information (England) Regulations 2008 require only the admission number and the preferences received — so a council publishes these voluntarily and many publish none at all.

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

2,230

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,936

86.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

294

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

600

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 Roundhay School 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 Roundhay School reported 294 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.8% 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 Roundhay School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,450 2,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,583 places 1,530 on roll 2010/11 1,503 places 1,581 on roll 2011/12 1,503 places 1,615 on roll 2012/13 2,005 places 1,655 on roll 2013/14 2,005 places 1,774 on roll 2014/15 2,005 places 1,930 on roll 2015/16 2,005 places 1,983 on roll 2016/17 2,005 places 2,085 on roll 2017/18 2,250 places 2,206 on roll 2018/19 2,250 places 2,294 on roll 2020/21 2,550 places 2,405 on roll 2021/22 2,520 places 2,468 on roll 2022/23 2,559 places 2,527 on roll 2023/24 2,559 places 2,523 on roll 2024/25 2,830 places 2,514 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Leeds

Postcode LS8 1ND. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 108076).

Other contested secondary schools in Leeds

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.