School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Thomas Estley Community College?

In 2026/27, Thomas Estley Community College offered 159 places and 131 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.82

first choices for every place available

131 first preferences for 159 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Thomas Estley Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Thomas Estley Community College, 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

Thomas Estley Community College turned first-choice families away in 3 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 Thomas Estley Community College, 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 0.94 per place 232 first choices 246 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 174 first choices 176 places 2017/18 1.04 per place 186 first choices 179 places 2018/19 0.97 per place 151 first choices 155 places 2019/20 0.89 per place 147 first choices 165 places 2020/21 1.03 per place 181 first choices 176 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 161 first choices 167 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 154 first choices 167 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 167 first choices 173 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 193 first choices 173 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 154 first choices 166 places 2026/27 0.82 per place 131 first choices 159 places
First preferences per place at Thomas Estley Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 131 first preferences for 159 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Thomas Estley Community College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 246 232 232 0.94
2016/17 176 174 174 0.99
2017/18 179 186 175 1.04
2018/19 155 151 151 0.97
2019/20 165 147 147 0.89
2020/21 176 181 171 1.03
2021/22 167 161 161 0.96
2022/23 167 154 154 0.92
2023/24 173 167 166 0.97
2024/25 173 193 172 1.12
2025/26 166 154 154 0.93
2026/27 159 131 131 0.82

Places offered

159

in 2026/27

Named first choice

131

402 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

131 of 131

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 152 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

889

98.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

11

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 Thomas Estley Community College 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 Thomas Estley Community College reported 11 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.8% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Thomas Estley Community College from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 760 places 695 on roll 2013/14 760 places 734 on roll 2014/15 761 places 705 on roll 2015/16 761 places 717 on roll 2016/17 900 places 842 on roll 2017/18 900 places 941 on roll 2018/19 900 places 882 on roll 2020/21 900 places 891 on roll 2021/22 900 places 890 on roll 2022/23 900 places 891 on roll 2023/24 900 places 900 on roll 2024/25 900 places 889 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 LE9 6PT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138527).

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.