School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Lacon Childe School?

In 2026/27, The Lacon Childe School offered 99 places and 95 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.

0.96

first choices for every place available

95 first preferences for 99 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Lacon Childe School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Lacon Childe 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 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

The Lacon Childe School 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 The Lacon Childe 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 0.98 per place 98 first choices 100 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 97 first choices 100 places 2017/18 1 per place 116 first choices 116 places 2018/19 1 per place 103 first choices 103 places 2019/20 1.08 per place 112 first choices 104 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 92 first choices 93 places 2021/22 1 per place 108 first choices 108 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 95 first choices 100 places 2023/24 1.03 per place 110 first choices 107 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 111 first choices 108 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 108 first choices 114 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 95 first choices 99 places
First preferences per place at The Lacon Childe School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 95 first preferences for 99 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Lacon Childe School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 100 98 98 0.98
2016/17 100 97 97 0.97
2017/18 116 116 116 1
2018/19 103 103 103 1
2019/20 104 112 104 1.08
2020/21 93 92 92 0.99
2021/22 108 108 108 1
2022/23 100 95 95 0.95
2023/24 107 110 102 1.03
2024/25 108 111 104 1.03
2025/26 114 108 107 0.95
2026/27 99 95 95 0.96

Places offered

99

in 2026/27

Named first choice

95

146 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

95 of 95

Offers to families outside the council

16%

16 of 99 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

540

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

533

98.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

7

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 The Lacon Childe 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 The Lacon Childe School reported 7 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.7% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Lacon Childe School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 542 places 511 on roll 2015/16 542 places 499 on roll 2016/17 542 places 512 on roll 2017/18 542 places 553 on roll 2018/19 542 places 549 on roll 2020/21 540 places 560 on roll 2021/22 540 places 559 on roll 2022/23 540 places 542 on roll 2023/24 540 places 541 on roll 2024/25 540 places 533 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 DY14 8PE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141451).

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.