School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Welland Park Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Welland Park Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 189 put it first and 185 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.

4

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

189 first preferences for 206 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Welland Park Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Welland Park 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

Welland Park Academy 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 Welland Park 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 0.99 per place 275 first choices 279 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 157 first choices 160 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 208 first choices 210 places 2018/19 1.06 per place 220 first choices 207 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 189 first choices 203 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 192 first choices 177 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 169 first choices 174 places 2022/23 0.85 per place 175 first choices 205 places 2023/24 0.87 per place 168 first choices 193 places 2024/25 0.92 per place 185 first choices 201 places 2025/26 1.11 per place 218 first choices 196 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 189 first choices 206 places
First preferences per place at Welland Park Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 189 first preferences for 206 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Welland Park Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 279 275 275 0.99
2016/17 160 157 157 0.98
2017/18 210 208 208 0.99
2018/19 207 220 204 1.06
2019/20 203 189 189 0.93
2020/21 177 192 177 1.08
2021/22 174 169 167 0.97
2022/23 205 175 175 0.85
2023/24 193 168 168 0.87
2024/25 201 185 185 0.92
2025/26 196 218 192 1.11
2026/27 206 189 185 0.92

Places offered

206

in 2026/27

Named first choice

189

477 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

97.9%

185 of 189

Offers to families outside the council

25%

52 of 206 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

984

93.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

66

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 Welland Park 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 Welland Park Academy reported 66 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Welland Park Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 752 places 730 on roll 2012/13 752 places 722 on roll 2013/14 752 places 689 on roll 2014/15 752 places 740 on roll 2015/16 752 places 785 on roll 2016/17 800 places 855 on roll 2017/18 950 places 946 on roll 2018/19 950 places 964 on roll 2020/21 950 places 942 on roll 2021/22 950 places 962 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 967 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 967 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 984 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 9DR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137170).

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.