School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Soar Valley College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named Soar Valley College as their first choice did not get a place: 313 put it first and 282 of them were offered one.

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

31

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

313 first preferences for 317 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Soar Valley College

There is no published appeal success rate for Soar Valley College, 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

Soar Valley College 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 Soar Valley College, 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 1.25 per place 337 first choices 270 places 2016/17 1.23 per place 336 first choices 273 places 2017/18 1.31 per place 349 first choices 266 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 353 first choices 317 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 356 first choices 319 places 2020/21 1.15 per place 365 first choices 318 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 351 first choices 312 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 348 first choices 312 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 343 first choices 320 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 322 first choices 319 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 330 first choices 316 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 313 first choices 317 places
First preferences per place at Soar Valley College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 313 first preferences for 317 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Soar Valley College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 270 337 258 1.25
2016/17 273 336 245 1.23
2017/18 266 349 236 1.31
2018/19 317 353 277 1.11
2019/20 319 356 253 1.12
2020/21 318 365 272 1.15
2021/22 312 351 281 1.12
2022/23 312 348 271 1.12
2023/24 320 343 281 1.07
2024/25 319 322 273 1.01
2025/26 316 330 277 1.04
2026/27 317 313 282 0.99

Places offered

317

in 2026/27

Named first choice

313

821 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

90.1%

282 of 313

Offers to families outside the council

3%

8 of 317 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 120286.

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

1,561

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,563

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

2

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 Soar Valley College 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 Soar Valley College 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 Soar Valley College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,275 places 1,287 on roll 2010/11 1,275 places 1,280 on roll 2011/12 1,275 places 1,269 on roll 2012/13 1,275 places 1,272 on roll 2013/14 1,275 places 1,268 on roll 2014/15 1,275 places 1,269 on roll 2015/16 1,275 places 1,291 on roll 2016/17 1,275 places 1,318 on roll 2017/18 1,520 places 1,431 on roll 2018/19 1,560 places 1,507 on roll 2020/21 1,561 places 1,564 on roll 2021/22 1,561 places 1,562 on roll 2022/23 1,561 places 1,564 on roll 2023/24 1,561 places 1,564 on roll 2024/25 1,561 places 1,563 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 7GY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148877).

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.