School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Charnwood College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Charnwood College as their first choice did not get a place: 108 put it first and 97 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Leicestershire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

11

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

108 first preferences for 142 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Charnwood College

There is no published appeal success rate for Charnwood 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 Leicestershire 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 Leicestershire, 17.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 128 of 715 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 Leicestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Leicestershire 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

Charnwood College turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Charnwood College, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.9 per place 57 first choices 63 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 69 first choices 73 places 2018/19 0.73 per place 62 first choices 85 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 55 first choices 59 places 2020/21 0.77 per place 55 first choices 71 places 2021/22 0.76 per place 66 first choices 87 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 79 first choices 94 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 124 first choices 111 places 2024/25 0.91 per place 122 first choices 134 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 124 first choices 118 places 2026/27 0.76 per place 108 first choices 142 places
First preferences per place at Charnwood College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 108 first preferences for 142 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Charnwood College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 63 57 57 0.9
2017/18 73 69 69 0.95
2018/19 85 62 61 0.73
2019/20 59 55 54 0.93
2020/21 71 55 55 0.77
2021/22 87 66 66 0.76
2022/23 94 79 79 0.84
2023/24 111 124 106 1.12
2024/25 134 122 120 0.91
2025/26 118 124 118 1.05
2026/27 142 108 97 0.76

Places offered

142

in 2026/27

Named first choice

108

457 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.8%

97 of 108

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 142 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

782

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

576

73.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

206

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Charnwood 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 Charnwood College reported 206 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 73.7% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Charnwood College from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 756 places 318 on roll 2015/16 756 places 282 on roll 2016/17 1,415 places 582 on roll 2017/18 1,442 places 527 on roll 2018/19 1,442 places 514 on roll 2020/21 1,082 places 495 on roll 2021/22 1,082 places 545 on roll 2022/23 1,082 places 565 on roll 2023/24 1,082 places 580 on roll 2024/25 1,082 places 647 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Leicestershire

Postcode LE11 4SQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141874).

Other contested secondary schools in Leicestershire

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.