School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Cedars Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named The Cedars Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 180 and 181 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

181 first preferences for 180 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Cedars Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Cedars 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

The Cedars Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at The Cedars 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 0.96 per place 140 first choices 146 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 138 first choices 147 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 133 first choices 143 places 2018/19 0.87 per place 151 first choices 173 places 2019/20 0.89 per place 168 first choices 188 places 2020/21 1 per place 187 first choices 187 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 153 first choices 167 places 2022/23 1.15 per place 211 first choices 184 places 2023/24 1 per place 186 first choices 186 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 176 first choices 182 places 2025/26 0.96 per place 179 first choices 186 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 181 first choices 180 places
First preferences per place at The Cedars Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 181 first preferences for 180 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Cedars Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 146 140 140 0.96
2016/17 147 138 138 0.94
2017/18 143 133 133 0.93
2018/19 173 151 151 0.87
2019/20 188 168 167 0.89
2020/21 187 187 180 1
2021/22 167 153 153 0.92
2022/23 184 211 180 1.15
2023/24 186 186 167 1
2024/25 182 176 160 0.97
2025/26 186 179 168 0.96
2026/27 180 181 169 1.01

Places offered

180

in 2026/27

Named first choice

181

411 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.4%

169 of 181

Offers to families outside the council

16%

28 of 180 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

929

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

946

101.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

17

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

360

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 The Cedars 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 The Cedars 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Cedars Academy from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 782 places 526 on roll 2014/15 792 places 498 on roll 2015/16 1,260 places 996 on roll 2016/17 1,260 places 968 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 909 on roll 2018/19 1,100 places 923 on roll 2020/21 1,289 places 984 on roll 2021/22 1,289 places 993 on roll 2022/23 1,289 places 986 on roll 2023/24 1,289 places 988 on roll 2024/25 1,289 places 981 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 LE4 4GH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140787).

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.