School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 13 families who named Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 164 and 171 put it first.

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

1.04

first choices for every place available

171 first preferences for 164 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary 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

Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary Academy turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary 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 1.03 per place 151 first choices 147 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 143 first choices 137 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 166 first choices 140 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 163 first choices 139 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 189 first choices 169 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 171 first choices 150 places 2021/22 1.2 per place 174 first choices 145 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 166 first choices 139 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 149 first choices 134 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 134 first choices 136 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 129 first choices 136 places 2026/27 1.04 per place 171 first choices 164 places
First preferences per place at Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 171 first preferences for 164 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 147 151 139 1.03
2016/17 137 143 134 1.04
2017/18 140 166 139 1.19
2018/19 139 163 138 1.17
2019/20 169 189 161 1.12
2020/21 150 171 140 1.14
2021/22 145 174 137 1.2
2022/23 139 166 130 1.19
2023/24 134 149 126 1.11
2024/25 136 134 122 0.99
2025/26 136 129 126 0.95
2026/27 164 171 158 1.04

Places offered

164

in 2026/27

Named first choice

171

352 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.4%

158 of 171

Offers to families outside the council

4%

6 of 164 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

753

100.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

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 Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary 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 Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary 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 Saint Martin's Catholic Voluntary Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 341 places 301 on roll 2013/14 580 places 299 on roll 2014/15 580 places 390 on roll 2015/16 700 places 546 on roll 2016/17 700 places 604 on roll 2017/18 700 places 659 on roll 2018/19 700 places 688 on roll 2020/21 700 places 767 on roll 2021/22 700 places 777 on roll 2022/23 700 places 771 on roll 2023/24 700 places 772 on roll 2024/25 750 places 753 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 CV13 6BF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138290).

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.