School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Carre's Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Carre's Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: 95 put it first and 84 of them were offered one.

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

11

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

95 first preferences for 113 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Carre's Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Carre's 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

Carre's Grammar School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 9 of those years. In the other 2 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Carre's 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 1.13 per place 131 first choices 116 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 118 first choices 107 places 2017/18 1.12 per place 86 first choices 77 places 2018/19 1.07 per place 129 first choices 120 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 95 first choices 98 places 2020/21 1.02 per place 104 first choices 102 places 2021/22 1.09 per place 100 first choices 92 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 138 first choices 128 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 105 first choices 103 places 2024/25 0.94 per place 103 first choices 110 places 2025/26 1.05 per place 126 first choices 120 places 2026/27 0.84 per place 95 first choices 113 places
First preferences per place at Carre's Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 95 first preferences for 113 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Carre's 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
2015/16 116 131 114 1.13
2016/17 107 118 103 1.1
2017/18 77 86 75 1.12
2018/19 120 129 114 1.07
2019/20 98 95 85 0.97
2020/21 102 104 94 1.02
2021/22 92 100 89 1.09
2022/23 128 138 120 1.08
2023/24 103 105 96 1.02
2024/25 110 103 95 0.94
2025/26 120 126 114 1.05
2026/27 113 95 84 0.84

Places offered

113

in 2026/27

Named first choice

95

230 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.4%

84 of 95

Offers to families outside the council

13%

15 of 113 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

570

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

568

99.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

2

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

260

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 Carre's 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 Carre's Grammar School reported 2 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.6% 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 Carre's Grammar School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 860 places 820 on roll 2012/13 860 places 814 on roll 2013/14 830 places 812 on roll 2014/15 795 places 815 on roll 2015/16 795 places 827 on roll 2016/17 795 places 820 on roll 2017/18 860 places 795 on roll 2018/19 830 places 778 on roll 2020/21 830 places 790 on roll 2021/22 830 places 777 on roll 2022/23 830 places 803 on roll 2023/24 830 places 791 on roll 2024/25 830 places 802 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

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. Carre's Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Carre's Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
16 July 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2622

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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 NG34 7DD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137213).

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.