School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bourne Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named Bourne Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 248 and 254 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

254 first preferences for 248 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bourne Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Bourne 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 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

Bourne Academy turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Bourne 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 0.89 per place 199 first choices 223 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 216 first choices 221 places 2017/18 1.05 per place 232 first choices 221 places 2018/19 1.16 per place 283 first choices 243 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 241 first choices 247 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 234 first choices 247 places 2021/22 0.87 per place 216 first choices 248 places 2022/23 1.11 per place 266 first choices 240 places 2023/24 0.88 per place 206 first choices 234 places 2024/25 1 per place 240 first choices 239 places 2025/26 1.14 per place 270 first choices 236 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 254 first choices 248 places
First preferences per place at Bourne Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 254 first preferences for 248 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bourne Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 223 199 196 0.89
2016/17 221 216 209 0.98
2017/18 221 232 204 1.05
2018/19 243 283 234 1.16
2019/20 247 241 232 0.98
2020/21 247 234 226 0.95
2021/22 248 216 213 0.87
2022/23 240 266 232 1.11
2023/24 234 206 206 0.88
2024/25 239 240 223 1
2025/26 236 270 223 1.14
2026/27 248 254 232 1.02

Places offered

248

in 2026/27

Named first choice

254

590 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.3%

232 of 254

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 248 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

1,250

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,238

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

12

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

300

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 Bourne 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 Bourne Academy reported 12 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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 Bourne 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 1,225 places 1,217 on roll 2012/13 1,225 places 1,235 on roll 2013/14 1,225 places 1,226 on roll 2014/15 1,225 places 1,241 on roll 2015/16 1,225 places 1,277 on roll 2016/17 1,225 places 1,294 on roll 2017/18 1,225 places 1,299 on roll 2018/19 1,390 places 1,338 on roll 2020/21 1,550 places 1,418 on roll 2021/22 1,550 places 1,443 on roll 2022/23 1,550 places 1,461 on roll 2023/24 1,550 places 1,490 on roll 2024/25 1,550 places 1,560 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
Lincolnshire

Postcode PE10 9DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137572).

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.