School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Robert Smyth Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 17 families who named The Robert Smyth Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 207 and 223 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Leicestershire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

1.08

first choices for every place available

223 first preferences for 207 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Robert Smyth Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Robert Smyth 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 Robert Smyth Academy turned first-choice families away in 7 of the last 11 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Robert Smyth Academy, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.99 per place 139 first choices 140 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 121 first choices 125 places 2018/19 0.93 per place 116 first choices 125 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 148 first choices 164 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 203 first choices 180 places 2021/22 1.07 per place 191 first choices 178 places 2022/23 1.36 per place 236 first choices 174 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 225 first choices 202 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 220 first choices 201 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 217 first choices 204 places 2026/27 1.08 per place 223 first choices 207 places
First preferences per place at The Robert Smyth Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 223 first preferences for 207 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Robert Smyth Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 140 139 139 0.99
2017/18 125 121 121 0.97
2018/19 125 116 116 0.93
2019/20 164 148 148 0.9
2020/21 180 203 174 1.13
2021/22 178 191 173 1.07
2022/23 174 236 174 1.36
2023/24 202 225 201 1.11
2024/25 201 220 199 1.09
2025/26 204 217 204 1.06
2026/27 207 223 206 1.08

Places offered

207

in 2026/27

Named first choice

223

522 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.4%

206 of 223

Offers to families outside the council

7%

14 of 207 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

960

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

969

100.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

9

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

460

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 Robert Smyth 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 Robert Smyth 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Robert Smyth Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,346 places 1,286 on roll 2012/13 1,351 places 1,244 on roll 2013/14 1,351 places 1,245 on roll 2014/15 1,351 places 1,249 on roll 2015/16 1,351 places 1,043 on roll 2016/17 1,343 places 950 on roll 2017/18 1,343 places 917 on roll 2018/19 1,343 places 886 on roll 2020/21 1,343 places 1,032 on roll 2021/22 1,343 places 1,106 on roll 2022/23 1,390 places 1,165 on roll 2023/24 1,420 places 1,205 on roll 2024/25 1,420 places 1,278 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 LE16 7JG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137161).

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.