School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 64 families who named De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 211 and 262 put it first.

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

1.24

first choices for every place available

262 first preferences for 211 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire

There is no published appeal success rate for De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire, 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

De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire turned first-choice families away in 4 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 De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire, 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 0.91 per place 199 first choices 219 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 208 first choices 215 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 204 first choices 217 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 239 first choices 219 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 226 first choices 220 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 207 first choices 220 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 198 first choices 217 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 207 first choices 219 places 2023/24 0.92 per place 188 first choices 204 places 2024/25 0.89 per place 181 first choices 203 places 2025/26 1 per place 217 first choices 216 places 2026/27 1.24 per place 262 first choices 211 places
First preferences per place at De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 262 first preferences for 211 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 219 199 195 0.91
2016/17 215 208 208 0.97
2017/18 217 204 204 0.94
2018/19 219 239 203 1.09
2019/20 220 226 209 1.03
2020/21 220 207 194 0.94
2021/22 217 198 182 0.91
2022/23 219 207 196 0.95
2023/24 204 188 187 0.92
2024/25 203 181 181 0.89
2025/26 216 217 212 1
2026/27 211 262 198 1.24

Places offered

211

in 2026/27

Named first choice

262

603 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.6%

198 of 262

Offers to families outside the council

2%

4 of 211 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

1,026

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,095

106.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

69

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

282

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 De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire 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 De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at De Lisle College Loughborough Leicestershire from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,308 places 1,311 on roll 2013/14 1,308 places 1,273 on roll 2014/15 1,308 places 1,261 on roll 2015/16 1,308 places 1,278 on roll 2016/17 1,308 places 1,321 on roll 2017/18 1,308 places 1,292 on roll 2018/19 1,308 places 1,283 on roll 2020/21 1,308 places 1,276 on roll 2021/22 1,308 places 1,275 on roll 2022/23 1,308 places 1,291 on roll 2023/24 1,308 places 1,300 on roll 2024/25 1,308 places 1,349 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Leicestershire

Postcode LE11 4SQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138298).

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.