School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bourne Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 67 families who named Bourne Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 238 and 301 put it first.

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

1.26

first choices for every place available

301 first preferences for 238 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bourne Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bourne Grammar 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

Bourne Grammar 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 Bourne Grammar 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 1.23 per place 294 first choices 239 places 2016/17 1.17 per place 280 first choices 239 places 2017/18 1.12 per place 266 first choices 237 places 2018/19 1.38 per place 330 first choices 240 places 2019/20 1.42 per place 342 first choices 241 places 2020/21 1.3 per place 313 first choices 240 places 2021/22 1.52 per place 365 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.26 per place 298 first choices 236 places 2023/24 1.32 per place 316 first choices 240 places 2024/25 1.48 per place 355 first choices 240 places 2025/26 1.42 per place 339 first choices 239 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 301 first choices 238 places
First preferences per place at Bourne Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 301 first preferences for 238 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bourne Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 239 294 235 1.23
2016/17 239 280 235 1.17
2017/18 237 266 225 1.12
2018/19 240 330 237 1.38
2019/20 241 342 238 1.42
2020/21 240 313 237 1.3
2021/22 240 365 234 1.52
2022/23 236 298 234 1.26
2023/24 240 316 236 1.32
2024/25 240 355 240 1.48
2025/26 239 339 234 1.42
2026/27 238 301 234 1.26

Places offered

238

in 2026/27

Named first choice

301

483 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.7%

234 of 301

Offers to families outside the council

14%

34 of 238 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,210

100.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

500

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 Grammar 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 Bourne Grammar 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bourne Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,008 places 990 on roll 2012/13 1,008 places 1,031 on roll 2013/14 1,123 places 1,116 on roll 2014/15 1,150 places 1,209 on roll 2015/16 1,450 places 1,319 on roll 2016/17 1,167 places 1,431 on roll 2017/18 1,428 places 1,503 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 1,576 on roll 2020/21 1,750 places 1,680 on roll 2021/22 1,700 places 1,704 on roll 2022/23 1,700 places 1,706 on roll 2023/24 1,700 places 1,725 on roll 2024/25 1,700 places 1,739 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lincolnshire

Postcode PE10 9JE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137793).

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.