School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Long Field Spencer Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Long Field Spencer Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 218 put it first and 204 of them were offered one.

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

14

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

218 first preferences for 221 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Long Field Spencer Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Long Field Spencer 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 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

Long Field Spencer Academy turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Long Field Spencer 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 0.85 per place 96 first choices 113 places 2016/17 0.86 per place 101 first choices 117 places 2017/18 0.84 per place 108 first choices 128 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 144 first choices 147 places 2019/20 1.07 per place 189 first choices 177 places 2020/21 1.11 per place 194 first choices 175 places 2021/22 1.02 per place 180 first choices 176 places 2022/23 1.58 per place 277 first choices 175 places 2023/24 1.47 per place 243 first choices 165 places 2024/25 1.51 per place 266 first choices 176 places 2025/26 1.51 per place 260 first choices 172 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 218 first choices 221 places
First preferences per place at Long Field Spencer Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 218 first preferences for 221 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Long Field Spencer Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 113 96 96 0.85
2016/17 117 101 101 0.86
2017/18 128 108 108 0.84
2018/19 147 144 144 0.98
2019/20 177 189 168 1.07
2020/21 175 194 173 1.11
2021/22 176 180 174 1.02
2022/23 175 277 173 1.58
2023/24 165 243 159 1.47
2024/25 176 266 170 1.51
2025/26 172 260 171 1.51
2026/27 221 218 204 0.99

Places offered

221

in 2026/27

Named first choice

218

450 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.6%

204 of 218

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 221 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

928

103.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

28

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 Long Field Spencer 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 Long Field Spencer 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Long Field Spencer Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 800 places 733 on roll 2013/14 800 places 650 on roll 2014/15 800 places 573 on roll 2015/16 800 places 539 on roll 2016/17 800 places 557 on roll 2017/18 800 places 584 on roll 2018/19 800 places 646 on roll 2020/21 800 places 767 on roll 2021/22 800 places 827 on roll 2022/23 860 places 907 on roll 2023/24 860 places 929 on roll 2024/25 900 places 928 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 LE13 0BN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138628).

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.