School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lakelands Academy?

In 2026/27, Lakelands Academy offered 113 places and 107 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.95

first choices for every place available

107 first preferences for 113 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lakelands Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Lakelands 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 Shropshire 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 Shropshire, 26.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 70 of 266 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 Shropshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Shropshire 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

Lakelands Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Lakelands 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 81 first choices 84 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 109 first choices 108 places 2017/18 0.97 per place 90 first choices 93 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 91 first choices 95 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 100 first choices 103 places 2020/21 1.31 per place 144 first choices 110 places 2021/22 1.04 per place 111 first choices 107 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 111 first choices 113 places 2023/24 1.09 per place 121 first choices 111 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 126 first choices 114 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 110 first choices 111 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 107 first choices 113 places
First preferences per place at Lakelands Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 107 first preferences for 113 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lakelands 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 84 81 81 0.96
2016/17 108 109 107 1.01
2017/18 93 90 90 0.97
2018/19 95 91 91 0.96
2019/20 103 100 100 0.97
2020/21 110 144 107 1.31
2021/22 107 111 103 1.04
2022/23 113 111 111 0.98
2023/24 111 121 109 1.09
2024/25 114 126 112 1.11
2025/26 111 110 110 0.99
2026/27 113 107 107 0.95

Places offered

113

in 2026/27

Named first choice

107

242 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

107 of 107

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 113 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

580

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

575

99.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

5

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 Lakelands 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 Lakelands Academy reported 5 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.1% 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 Lakelands Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 580 places 562 on roll 2013/14 580 places 551 on roll 2014/15 580 places 545 on roll 2015/16 580 places 512 on roll 2016/17 580 places 511 on roll 2017/18 580 places 508 on roll 2018/19 580 places 520 on roll 2020/21 580 places 557 on roll 2021/22 580 places 551 on roll 2022/23 580 places 549 on roll 2023/24 580 places 568 on roll 2024/25 580 places 575 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
Shropshire

Postcode SY12 0EA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139102).

Other contested secondary schools in Shropshire

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.