School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at South Charnwood High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named South Charnwood High School as their first choice did not get a place: 153 put it first and 152 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.

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

153 first preferences for 173 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at South Charnwood High School

There is no published appeal success rate for South Charnwood High 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

South Charnwood High School 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 South Charnwood High 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 0.99 per place 164 first choices 165 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 146 first choices 148 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 173 first choices 175 places 2018/19 0.87 per place 150 first choices 173 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 196 first choices 173 places 2020/21 0.93 per place 163 first choices 175 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 144 first choices 169 places 2022/23 1.14 per place 193 first choices 170 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 161 first choices 166 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 196 first choices 171 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 170 first choices 166 places 2026/27 0.88 per place 153 first choices 173 places
First preferences per place at South Charnwood High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 153 first preferences for 173 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at South Charnwood High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 165 164 163 0.99
2016/17 148 146 146 0.99
2017/18 175 173 158 0.99
2018/19 173 150 149 0.87
2019/20 173 196 164 1.13
2020/21 175 163 162 0.93
2021/22 169 144 144 0.85
2022/23 170 193 160 1.14
2023/24 166 161 159 0.97
2024/25 171 196 161 1.15
2025/26 166 170 160 1.02
2026/27 173 153 152 0.88

Places offered

173

in 2026/27

Named first choice

153

559 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.3%

152 of 153

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 173 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

850

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

865

101.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

15

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 South Charnwood High 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 South Charnwood High School 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 South Charnwood High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 695 places 628 on roll 2013/14 695 places 627 on roll 2014/15 695 places 609 on roll 2015/16 714 places 720 on roll 2016/17 714 places 737 on roll 2017/18 714 places 799 on roll 2018/19 714 places 842 on roll 2020/21 850 places 861 on roll 2021/22 850 places 860 on roll 2022/23 850 places 870 on roll 2023/24 850 places 869 on roll 2024/25 850 places 865 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 LE67 9TB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139442).

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.