School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Winstanley School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named The Winstanley School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 126 and 140 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Leicestershire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

1.11

first choices for every place available

140 first preferences for 126 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Winstanley School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Winstanley 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

The Winstanley School turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 10 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 Winstanley School, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.94 per place 99 first choices 105 places 2018/19 0.95 per place 96 first choices 101 places 2019/20 0.86 per place 101 first choices 117 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 94 first choices 105 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 103 first choices 107 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 114 first choices 119 places 2023/24 0.8 per place 102 first choices 128 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 122 first choices 127 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 134 first choices 118 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 140 first choices 126 places
First preferences per place at The Winstanley School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 140 first preferences for 126 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Winstanley School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 105 99 99 0.94
2018/19 101 96 96 0.95
2019/20 117 101 101 0.86
2020/21 105 94 94 0.9
2021/22 107 103 102 0.96
2022/23 119 114 104 0.96
2023/24 128 102 102 0.8
2024/25 127 122 122 0.96
2025/26 118 134 114 1.14
2026/27 126 140 121 1.11

Places offered

126

in 2026/27

Named first choice

140

272 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.4%

121 of 140

Offers to families outside the council

53%

67 of 126 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

693

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

636

91.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

57

across Years 7 to 11

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 The Winstanley 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 The Winstanley School reported 57 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.8% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Winstanley School from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 600 places 574 on roll 2017/18 600 places 592 on roll 2018/19 600 places 591 on roll 2020/21 600 places 608 on roll 2021/22 600 places 609 on roll 2022/23 600 places 625 on roll 2023/24 600 places 640 on roll 2024/25 693 places 636 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 LE3 3BD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143844).

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.