School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wreake Valley Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 12 families who named Wreake Valley Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 203 put it first and 191 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.

12

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

203 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wreake Valley Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Wreake Valley 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

Wreake Valley Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Wreake Valley 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 0.96 per place 115 first choices 120 places 2016/17 0.96 per place 115 first choices 120 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 109 first choices 116 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 126 first choices 131 places 2019/20 0.86 per place 84 first choices 98 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 115 first choices 126 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 163 first choices 175 places 2022/23 0.87 per place 157 first choices 181 places 2023/24 0.87 per place 198 first choices 228 places 2024/25 1.02 per place 207 first choices 202 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 212 first choices 207 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 203 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at Wreake Valley Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 203 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wreake Valley Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 120 115 115 0.96
2016/17 120 115 115 0.96
2017/18 116 109 109 0.94
2018/19 131 126 126 0.96
2019/20 98 84 84 0.86
2020/21 126 115 115 0.91
2021/22 175 163 163 0.93
2022/23 181 157 157 0.87
2023/24 228 198 198 0.87
2024/25 202 207 192 1.02
2025/26 207 212 199 1.02
2026/27 205 203 191 0.99

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

203

392 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.1%

191 of 203

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 205 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

1,199

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

997

83.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

202

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

283

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 Wreake Valley 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 Wreake Valley Academy reported 202 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 83.2% 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 Wreake Valley 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 1,482 places 1,395 on roll 2012/13 1,536 places 1,328 on roll 2013/14 1,536 places 1,234 on roll 2014/15 1,536 places 1,142 on roll 2015/16 1,482 places 978 on roll 2016/17 1,482 places 801 on roll 2017/18 1,482 places 812 on roll 2018/19 1,482 places 784 on roll 2020/21 1,482 places 771 on roll 2021/22 1,482 places 877 on roll 2022/23 1,482 places 951 on roll 2023/24 1,482 places 1,044 on roll 2024/25 1,482 places 1,120 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 LE7 1LY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137983).

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.