School admission appeals in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire heard 619 school admission appeals in 2026, and 285 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe Lincolnshire as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the Lincolnshire success rate has run 19.5 percentage points higher than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in Lincolnshire were upheld
835 of 2,146 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
759
by parents in Lincolnshire
Appeals heard by a panel
619
82% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
285
46% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
56.5% of the primary appeals heard in Lincolnshire were infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
In Lincolnshire, 22.1% of infant class size appeals were upheld (27 of 122 appeals heard in 2024–2026) against 9.4% across England. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in Lincolnshire
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the Lincolnshire rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
Which appeals succeed in Lincolnshire
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 1,930 | 778 | 40.3% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 216 | 57 | 26.4% | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 122 | 27 | 22.1% | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in Lincolnshire, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | Lincolnshire | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 481 | 169 | 35.1% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 503 | 266 | 52.9% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 594 | 282 | 47.5% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 685 | 346 | 50.5% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 671 | 295 | 44% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 561 | 242 | 43.1% | 19% |
| 2022 | 666 | 277 | 41.6% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 612 | 247 | 40.4% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 838 | 294 | 35.1% | 20% |
| 2025 | 689 | 256 | 37.2% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 619 | 285 | 46% | 18.5% |
How Lincolnshire compares
Success rate ranking
9 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
8 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 2,146 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Schools in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire has 332 state-funded mainstream schools — 278 primary, 53 secondary and 1 all-through. The largest concentrations are in Lincoln, Spalding, Grantham and Boston.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the Lincolnshire schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 35 secondary and 70 primary schools in Lincolnshire →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Priory Academy LSST | 232 | 438 | 1.89 |
| Skegness Grammar School | 71 | 129 | 1.82 |
| The King's School, Grantham | 171 | 280 | 1.64 |
| Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School | 180 | 268 | 1.49 |
| Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle | 118 | 167 | 1.42 |
| Spalding High School | 149 | 202 | 1.36 |
| Boston High School | 119 | 158 | 1.33 |
| Bourne Grammar School | 238 | 301 | 1.26 |
| Caistor Grammar School | 113 | 142 | 1.26 |
| Queen Elizabeth's Grammar Alford - A Selective Academy | 68 | 86 | 1.26 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Edward Richardson Primary School, Tetford | 14 | 27 | 1.93 |
| The Lincoln St Peter at Gowts Church of England Primary School | 28 | 48 | 1.71 |
| Beacon Primary Academy | 30 | 51 | 1.70 |
| Church Lane Primary School & Nursery | 30 | 46 | 1.53 |
| The Little Gonerby Church of England Primary Academy, Grantham | 30 | 45 | 1.50 |
| Bourne Elsea Park Church of England Primary Academy | 29 | 43 | 1.48 |
| Tattershall Primary School | 20 | 29 | 1.45 |
| Weston Hills CofE Primary School | 20 | 28 | 1.40 |
| The Holbeach William Stukeley Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School | 45 | 62 | 1.38 |
| Lutton St Nicholas Primary Academy | 15 | 20 | 1.33 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in Lincolnshire
Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 12 objections about schools in Lincolnshire, and found the arrangements did not comply in 8.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| King Edward VI Grammar School | 2 August 2022 | Did not comply |
| All community and voluntary controlled schools in Lincolnshire | 9 December 2021 | Did not comply |
| The Priory Academy LSST | 12 August 2019 | Complied |
| The Priory Ruskin Academy | 26 July 2019 | Complied |
| The King's School | 17 July 2019 | Complied |
| North Kesteven Academy | 16 July 2019 | Did not comply |
| Keelby Primary Academy | 16 May 2016 | Did not comply |
| King Edward VI Academy, Skegness Grammar and Charles Read Academy | 6 November 2015 | Did not comply |
| Stamford Welland Academy | 9 July 2015 | Complied |
| Malcolm Sargent Primary School | 7 May 2015 | Did not comply |
Lincolnshire does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.