School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Humphrey Perkins School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Humphrey Perkins School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 178 and 191 put it first.

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

1.07

first choices for every place available

191 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Humphrey Perkins School

There is no published appeal success rate for Humphrey Perkins School, 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

Humphrey Perkins School turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Humphrey Perkins School, 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 0.98 per place 180 first choices 184 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 168 first choices 170 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 157 first choices 161 places 2018/19 0.76 per place 126 first choices 165 places 2019/20 0.82 per place 141 first choices 172 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 131 first choices 167 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 156 first choices 166 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 186 first choices 173 places 2023/24 1.12 per place 195 first choices 174 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 170 first choices 181 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 175 first choices 177 places 2026/27 1.07 per place 191 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at Humphrey Perkins School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 191 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Humphrey Perkins School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 184 180 180 0.98
2016/17 170 168 168 0.99
2017/18 161 157 157 0.98
2018/19 165 126 126 0.76
2019/20 172 141 141 0.82
2020/21 167 131 131 0.78
2021/22 166 156 156 0.94
2022/23 173 186 168 1.08
2023/24 174 195 168 1.12
2024/25 181 170 170 0.94
2025/26 177 175 168 0.99
2026/27 178 191 171 1.07

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

191

402 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.5%

171 of 191

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 178 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

842

93.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

58

across Years 7 to 11

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 Humphrey Perkins School 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 Humphrey Perkins School reported 58 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.6% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Humphrey Perkins School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 995 places 894 on roll 2012/13 995 places 913 on roll 2013/14 995 places 855 on roll 2014/15 995 places 838 on roll 2015/16 995 places 870 on roll 2016/17 995 places 821 on roll 2017/18 995 places 761 on roll 2018/19 995 places 783 on roll 2020/21 900 places 762 on roll 2021/22 900 places 765 on roll 2022/23 900 places 814 on roll 2023/24 900 places 842 on roll 2024/25 900 places 842 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
Leicestershire

Postcode LE12 8JU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137799).

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.