School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Charles Read Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 13 families who named Charles Read Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 49 and 55 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

55 first preferences for 49 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Charles Read Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Charles Read 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

Charles Read Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 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 Charles Read 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 0.88 per place 38 first choices 43 places 2016/17 0.8 per place 37 first choices 46 places 2017/18 1.04 per place 55 first choices 53 places 2018/19 0.72 per place 39 first choices 54 places 2019/20 0.74 per place 39 first choices 53 places 2020/21 0.75 per place 41 first choices 55 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 55 first choices 57 places 2022/23 1 per place 53 first choices 53 places 2023/24 0.69 per place 38 first choices 55 places 2024/25 0.89 per place 49 first choices 55 places 2025/26 0.88 per place 46 first choices 52 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 55 first choices 49 places
First preferences per place at Charles Read Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 55 first preferences for 49 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Charles Read 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 43 38 38 0.88
2016/17 46 37 37 0.8
2017/18 53 55 48 1.04
2018/19 54 39 39 0.72
2019/20 53 39 38 0.74
2020/21 55 41 41 0.75
2021/22 57 55 48 0.96
2022/23 53 53 43 1
2023/24 55 38 38 0.69
2024/25 55 49 47 0.89
2025/26 52 46 44 0.88
2026/27 49 55 42 1.12

Places offered

49

in 2026/27

Named first choice

55

144 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.4%

42 of 55

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 49 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Charles Read Academy published for 2026 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 Charles Read Academy, 2026 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 Looked after children and all previously looked after children, including those children who appear to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. Looked after children: A ‘looked after child’ is a child who, at the time of making an application to a school, is: a) In the care of a local authority, or b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in exercise of its social services functions (see the definition in Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989). […] criterion continues in the source document
2 A child with a sibling on roll at the time of application. Siblings include a brother or sister who share the same parents; a half-brother, half-sister or legally adopted child living at the same address; a child looked after by a local authority placed in a foster family with other school age children; a stepchild or children who are not related but live as a family unit, where parents both live at the same address as the child.
3 Up to 5 applicants who have aptitude in table tennis and wish to participate in the Table Tennis Performance Programme. Note: The Table Tennis Performance Programme provides aspiring athletes the opportunity to combine elite training and academics. This programme opens the door to talented athletes (under 16 years old) to combine elite level training with their education, providing 7 hours of training at Charles Read Academy, and an additional 13 hours a week in the evening with Grantham College. Evidence of this aptitude will be provided via an assessment event/coaching session to which all those who have applied for a place under this priority will be invited. The process is as follows:
a) Complete a Common Application Form (CAF) and return it to your local authority by 31 October 2025. Indicate on the form that an application to the academy has been made under this priority.
b) Complete a separate application form for the Table Tennis Performance Programme (which can be found on the academy website) by 17 September 2025.
c) An assessment event/coaching session will take place at the academy during September/October.
d) Parents will be notified of the result of the assessment event by 20 October 2025.
4 Students who are on roll at Corby Glen Primary school of 14 December 2025. Students must be on roll on roll by this date for this priority to be awarded for national offer day. Any late applicants or applicants who join the school later, can have their application updated ready for the second round of offers. In all cases, parents must declare on the application form if this applies.
5 Children of all staff groups, where the member of staff has been employed at Charles Read Academy on a permanent contract for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to Charles Read Academy is made or where the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post at Charles Read Academy for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage.
6 The child living closest to the school. Straight line distance as calculated electronically to three figures after the decimal point (eg 1.543 miles) by Lincolnshire County Council school admissions team from the Post Office Address Point of the home to the Post Office Address Point of the school. The definition of the child’s home address is the permanent home address of the parent at the time of application. Proof of residence can be asked for at any time during the admissions process. […] criterion continues in the source document

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 2026 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.

Charles Read Academy's determined admission arrangements for 2026 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

276

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

268

97.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

8

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Charles Read 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 Charles Read Academy reported 8 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.1% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Charles Read Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 150 300 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 275 places 259 on roll 2011/12 275 places 267 on roll 2012/13 300 places 170 on roll 2013/14 300 places 158 on roll 2014/15 275 places 166 on roll 2015/16 275 places 181 on roll 2016/17 275 places 212 on roll 2017/18 275 places 240 on roll 2018/19 275 places 244 on roll 2020/21 289 places 262 on roll 2021/22 289 places 258 on roll 2022/23 276 places 269 on roll 2023/24 276 places 268 on roll 2024/25 276 places 268 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 NG33 4NT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136479).

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.