School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Rushey Mead Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 71 families who named Rushey Mead Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 356 and 413 put it first.

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

1.16

first choices for every place available

413 first preferences for 356 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Rushey Mead Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Rushey 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

Rushey Mead Academy turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Rushey Mead 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 0.89 per place 280 first choices 315 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 330 first choices 316 places 2017/18 1.1 per place 362 first choices 328 places 2018/19 1.08 per place 411 first choices 380 places 2019/20 1.42 per place 466 first choices 328 places 2020/21 1.35 per place 443 first choices 328 places 2021/22 1.31 per place 424 first choices 324 places 2022/23 1.23 per place 400 first choices 324 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 386 first choices 382 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 415 first choices 354 places 2025/26 1.19 per place 426 first choices 358 places 2026/27 1.16 per place 413 first choices 356 places
First preferences per place at Rushey Mead Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 413 first preferences for 356 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Rushey 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
2015/16 315 280 270 0.89
2016/17 316 330 263 1.04
2017/18 328 362 286 1.1
2018/19 380 411 343 1.08
2019/20 328 466 299 1.42
2020/21 328 443 312 1.35
2021/22 324 424 301 1.31
2022/23 324 400 294 1.23
2023/24 382 386 346 1.01
2024/25 354 415 323 1.17
2025/26 358 426 338 1.19
2026/27 356 413 342 1.16

Places offered

356

in 2026/27

Named first choice

413

820 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.8%

342 of 413

Offers to families outside the council

9%

32 of 356 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 120282.

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

1,755

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,776

101.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

21

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 Rushey 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 Rushey 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Rushey Mead Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,350 places 1,402 on roll 2010/11 1,350 places 1,395 on roll 2011/12 1,350 places 1,385 on roll 2012/13 1,350 places 1,380 on roll 2013/14 1,500 places 1,381 on roll 2014/15 1,502 places 1,419 on roll 2015/16 1,502 places 1,472 on roll 2016/17 1,502 places 1,549 on roll 2017/18 1,745 places 1,683 on roll 2018/19 1,795 places 1,794 on roll 2020/21 1,755 places 1,762 on roll 2021/22 1,755 places 1,737 on roll 2022/23 1,755 places 1,686 on roll 2023/24 1,755 places 1,748 on roll 2024/25 1,755 places 1,776 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Leicester

Postcode LE4 7AN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141916).

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.