School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Avanti Fields School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 46 families who named Avanti Fields School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 185 and 213 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Leicester actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

1.15

first choices for every place available

213 first preferences for 185 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Avanti Fields School

There is no published appeal success rate for Avanti Fields 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 Leicester 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 Leicester, 5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 50 of 1,003 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 Leicester.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Leicester 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

Avanti Fields School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 8 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Avanti Fields School, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.21 per place 35 first choices 164 places 2020/21 0.6 per place 108 first choices 180 places 2021/22 0.78 per place 136 first choices 175 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 213 first choices 179 places 2023/24 1.28 per place 239 first choices 186 places 2024/25 1.25 per place 241 first choices 193 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 212 first choices 187 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 213 first choices 185 places
First preferences per place at Avanti Fields School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 213 first preferences for 185 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Avanti Fields School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 164 35 35 0.21
2020/21 180 108 107 0.6
2021/22 175 136 134 0.78
2022/23 179 213 170 1.19
2023/24 186 239 173 1.28
2024/25 193 241 177 1.25
2025/26 187 212 170 1.13
2026/27 185 213 167 1.15

Places offered

185

in 2026/27

Named first choice

213

420 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

78.4%

167 of 213

Offers to families outside the council

13%

24 of 185 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

1,320

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,115

84.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

205

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 Avanti Fields 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 Avanti Fields School reported 205 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 84.5% 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Avanti Fields School from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,320 places 71 on roll 2020/21 1,320 places 421 on roll 2021/22 1,320 places 655 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 903 on roll 2023/24 1,320 places 1,036 on roll 2024/25 1,320 places 1,115 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Leicester

Postcode LE5 0BX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143679).

Other contested secondary schools in Leicester

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.