School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Caistor Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named Caistor Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 113 and 142 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

142 first preferences for 113 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Caistor Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Caistor 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

Caistor 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 Caistor 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 1.17 per place 110 first choices 94 places 2016/17 1.27 per place 124 first choices 98 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 126 first choices 100 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 122 first choices 100 places 2019/20 1.37 per place 137 first choices 100 places 2020/21 1.26 per place 125 first choices 99 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 133 first choices 99 places 2022/23 1.17 per place 116 first choices 99 places 2023/24 1.27 per place 123 first choices 97 places 2024/25 1.34 per place 129 first choices 96 places 2025/26 1.4 per place 134 first choices 96 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 142 first choices 113 places
First preferences per place at Caistor Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 142 first preferences for 113 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Caistor 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 94 110 92 1.17
2016/17 98 124 98 1.27
2017/18 100 126 99 1.26
2018/19 100 122 100 1.22
2019/20 100 137 100 1.37
2020/21 99 125 98 1.26
2021/22 99 133 98 1.34
2022/23 99 116 98 1.17
2023/24 97 123 97 1.27
2024/25 96 129 96 1.34
2025/26 96 134 96 1.4
2026/27 113 142 113 1.26

Places offered

113

in 2026/27

Named first choice

142

184 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.6%

113 of 142

Offers to families outside the council

64%

72 of 113 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Caistor Grammar School published for 2027 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Caistor Grammar School, 2027 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 After EHCP students and Looked After Children, the next students to be admitted are those who qualify and are in-catchment. In-catchment candidates are those whose principal residency is within 6.5 miles in a straight line distance from the Post Office Address of the School to that of the applicant’s principle residence. Lincolnshire County Council School Admissions Team will use the Post Office address for the applicant’s principle residence. The final decision of the straight line distance is made by Lincolnshire County Council School Admissions Team, calculated electronically to three figures after the decimal point (e.g. 1.543 miles). […] criterion continues in the source document
2 In the main admissions round for entry into Year 7, up to 12 places will be reserved for students who are in receipt of Pupil Premium (Ever 6). Aside from those Pupil Premium (Ever 6) students who have already been allocated places by virtue of being in-catchment, out-of-catchment students who are currently in receipt of Pupil Premium (Ever 6) will make up the remainder of these places, based on the highest V.R. scores (see section 5.4 below). […] criterion continues in the source document
3 Priority between children who do not fall into the above categories (5.1, 5.2 and 5.21) will go to the applicants with the higher V.R. scores.
4 In the case of over subscription in either category 5.1, 5.2, 5.21 or 5.3, we would take the highest V.R. scores. In the event of a tie, the following criteria shall apply: we shall calculate the mean rank position and, if there is still a tie, we shall take the highest individual score on the written test. If a tie still exists, we take the least number of mistakes made on the written paper, then the raw mark on the written paper and finally the raw mark overall. If there is still a tie between two students, then the School would admit both candidates. […] criterion continues in the source document
5 The date of determining whether a pupil qualifies as an in-catchment applicant on the basis of residence will be 1st September of the year preceding entry. For in-catchment status to be retained, we expect residence to be continuous in catchment after this date whilst they remain in School, up until the end of Year 11. Parents should write straight away to the Headteacher, explaining their reason(s) for moving out of catchment to enable them to make a recommendation to the Admissions Panel concerning status. The parents of candidates claiming in-catchment status will be asked to provide evidence in support of their claim for in-catchment status. […] criterion continues in the source document
6 Caistor Grammar School reserves the right to check any address and other information provided so we can apply the oversubscription criteria accurately and fairly. As an Admissions Authority we have the right to investigate any concerns we may have about an application and to withdraw the offer of a place if we consider the evidence is fraudulent or if misleading information is provided, for example if a false address was given which denied a place to a child with a stronger claim. If a place is withdrawn, the application will be considered afresh and parents will be advised of their right to appeal if a place is refused.
7 Any successful candidate claiming in-catchment status after 1st September of the year preceding entry will be placed on the in-catchment section of the waiting list a year from when they began residing in-catchment (as defined in Section 5.3 above). We wish to give priority to our local children, who have a reasonable expectation of going to a Grammar School, therefore we expect a full year of in-catchment residency. However the Board of Trustees will revi

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2027 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Caistor Grammar School's determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

459

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

503

109.6% of capacity

Over its capacity by

44

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

170

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 Caistor 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 Caistor 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Caistor Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 629 places 639 on roll 2011/12 629 places 641 on roll 2012/13 629 places 649 on roll 2013/14 629 places 652 on roll 2014/15 629 places 666 on roll 2015/16 629 places 654 on roll 2016/17 649 places 678 on roll 2017/18 629 places 686 on roll 2018/19 629 places 677 on roll 2020/21 629 places 678 on roll 2021/22 629 places 697 on roll 2022/23 629 places 684 on roll 2023/24 629 places 683 on roll 2024/25 629 places 667 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 LN7 6QJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136350).

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.