School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Castle Mead Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 53 families who named Castle Mead Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 250 and 278 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Leicester actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 7 years of official figures.

1.11

first choices for every place available

278 first preferences for 250 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Castle Mead Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Castle Mead 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 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

Castle Mead Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 7 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Castle Mead Academy, 2020/21 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 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2020/21 0.58 per place 143 first choices 247 places 2021/22 0.82 per place 210 first choices 256 places 2022/23 1.1 per place 263 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.36 per place 339 first choices 250 places 2024/25 1.42 per place 354 first choices 250 places 2025/26 1.26 per place 316 first choices 250 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 278 first choices 250 places
First preferences per place at Castle Mead Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 278 first preferences for 250 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Castle Mead Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2020/21 247 143 143 0.58
2021/22 256 210 210 0.82
2022/23 240 263 221 1.1
2023/24 250 339 235 1.36
2024/25 250 354 240 1.42
2025/26 250 316 233 1.26
2026/27 250 278 225 1.11

Places offered

250

in 2026/27

Named first choice

278

638 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.9%

225 of 278

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 250 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,235

102.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

35

reported as full or beyond

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 Castle Mead 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 Castle Mead Academy was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2020/21 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Castle Mead Academy from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 1,200 places 477 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 713 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 966 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,229 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,235 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Leicester

Postcode LE3 5QT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147068).

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.