School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Woodbrook Vale School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 56 families who named Woodbrook Vale School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 162 and 209 put it first.

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

1.29

first choices for every place available

209 first preferences for 162 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Woodbrook Vale School

There is no published appeal success rate for Woodbrook Vale 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

Woodbrook Vale School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Woodbrook Vale School, 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 1.25 per place 198 first choices 158 places 2016/17 1.37 per place 206 first choices 150 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 201 first choices 160 places 2018/19 1.4 per place 224 first choices 160 places 2019/20 1.03 per place 193 first choices 187 places 2020/21 1.24 per place 193 first choices 156 places 2021/22 1.41 per place 224 first choices 159 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 189 first choices 157 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 191 first choices 165 places 2024/25 1.08 per place 177 first choices 164 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 159 first choices 160 places 2026/27 1.29 per place 209 first choices 162 places
First preferences per place at Woodbrook Vale School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 209 first preferences for 162 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Woodbrook Vale School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 158 198 157 1.25
2016/17 150 206 150 1.37
2017/18 160 201 160 1.26
2018/19 160 224 157 1.4
2019/20 187 193 178 1.03
2020/21 156 193 151 1.24
2021/22 159 224 157 1.41
2022/23 157 189 153 1.2
2023/24 165 191 158 1.16
2024/25 164 177 160 1.08
2025/26 160 159 157 0.99
2026/27 162 209 153 1.29

Places offered

162

in 2026/27

Named first choice

209

461 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.2%

153 of 209

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 162 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

800

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

837

104.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

37

reported as full or beyond

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 Woodbrook Vale 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 Woodbrook Vale School 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 Woodbrook Vale School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 540 places 506 on roll 2012/13 540 places 497 on roll 2013/14 540 places 623 on roll 2014/15 750 places 743 on roll 2015/16 800 places 764 on roll 2016/17 800 places 784 on roll 2017/18 800 places 777 on roll 2018/19 800 places 802 on roll 2020/21 800 places 833 on roll 2021/22 800 places 827 on roll 2022/23 800 places 833 on roll 2023/24 800 places 836 on roll 2024/25 800 places 837 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 LE11 2ST. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137401).

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.