School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Boston High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 42 families who named Boston High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 119 and 158 put it first.

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

1.33

first choices for every place available

158 first preferences for 119 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Boston High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Boston High 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 Lincolnshire 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 Lincolnshire, 40.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 778 of 1,930 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 Lincolnshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Lincolnshire 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

Boston High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Boston High 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 110 first choices 88 places 2016/17 1.27 per place 119 first choices 94 places 2017/18 1.37 per place 100 first choices 73 places 2018/19 1.54 per place 140 first choices 91 places 2019/20 1.34 per place 131 first choices 98 places 2020/21 1.41 per place 147 first choices 104 places 2021/22 1.37 per place 123 first choices 90 places 2022/23 1.2 per place 112 first choices 93 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 116 first choices 94 places 2024/25 1.45 per place 136 first choices 94 places 2025/26 1.33 per place 142 first choices 107 places 2026/27 1.33 per place 158 first choices 119 places
First preferences per place at Boston High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 158 first preferences for 119 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Boston High 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 88 110 87 1.25
2016/17 94 119 94 1.27
2017/18 73 100 72 1.37
2018/19 91 140 91 1.54
2019/20 98 131 94 1.34
2020/21 104 147 101 1.41
2021/22 90 123 90 1.37
2022/23 93 112 90 1.2
2023/24 94 116 92 1.23
2024/25 94 136 93 1.45
2025/26 107 142 100 1.33
2026/27 119 158 116 1.33

Places offered

119

in 2026/27

Named first choice

158

240 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.4%

116 of 158

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 119 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

581

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

589

101.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

8

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

230

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 Boston High 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 Boston High 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Boston High School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 811 places 684 on roll 2013/14 811 places 684 on roll 2014/15 850 places 713 on roll 2015/16 850 places 731 on roll 2016/17 811 places 752 on roll 2017/18 811 places 777 on roll 2018/19 811 places 795 on roll 2020/21 811 places 851 on roll 2021/22 811 places 844 on roll 2022/23 811 places 831 on roll 2023/24 811 places 817 on roll 2024/25 811 places 817 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lincolnshire

Postcode PE21 9PF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139140).

Other contested secondary schools in Lincolnshire

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.