School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wigston Academy?

In 2026/27, Wigston Academy offered 241 places and 222 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.92

first choices for every place available

222 first preferences for 241 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wigston Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Wigston 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

Wigston Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Wigston 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 0.71 per place 34 first choices 48 places 2017/18 0.87 per place 257 first choices 297 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 215 first choices 243 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 237 first choices 256 places 2020/21 0.89 per place 207 first choices 232 places 2021/22 0.85 per place 208 first choices 246 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 196 first choices 223 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 243 first choices 261 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 239 first choices 255 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 264 first choices 254 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 222 first choices 241 places
First preferences per place at Wigston Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 222 first preferences for 241 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wigston 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 48 34 34 0.71
2017/18 297 257 257 0.87
2018/19 243 215 215 0.88
2019/20 256 237 237 0.93
2020/21 232 207 207 0.89
2021/22 246 208 208 0.85
2022/23 223 196 196 0.88
2023/24 261 243 243 0.93
2024/25 255 239 239 0.94
2025/26 254 264 243 1.04
2026/27 241 222 222 0.92

Places offered

241

in 2026/27

Named first choice

222

399 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

222 of 222

Offers to families outside the council

17%

39 of 232 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

1,560

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,306

83.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

254

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 Wigston 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 Wigston Academy reported 254 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.7% 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 Wigston Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 684 places 631 on roll 2012/13 684 places 632 on roll 2013/14 684 places 633 on roll 2014/15 684 places 637 on roll 2015/16 1,386 places 1,229 on roll 2016/17 1,393 places 1,173 on roll 2017/18 1,560 places 1,365 on roll 2018/19 1,560 places 1,306 on roll 2020/21 1,560 places 1,329 on roll 2021/22 1,560 places 1,331 on roll 2022/23 1,560 places 1,304 on roll 2023/24 1,560 places 1,333 on roll 2024/25 1,560 places 1,306 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 LE18 2DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137984).

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.