School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 122 and 139 put it first.

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

1.14

first choices for every place available

139 first preferences for 122 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College

There is no published appeal success rate for John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College, 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

John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College turned first-choice families away in 7 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 John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College, 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 0.91 per place 121 first choices 133 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 135 first choices 134 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 130 first choices 133 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 151 first choices 135 places 2019/20 1.11 per place 147 first choices 132 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 133 first choices 134 places 2021/22 1.06 per place 138 first choices 130 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 109 first choices 115 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 119 first choices 118 places 2024/25 1.19 per place 160 first choices 135 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 123 first choices 129 places 2026/27 1.14 per place 139 first choices 122 places
First preferences per place at John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 139 first preferences for 122 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 133 121 121 0.91
2016/17 134 135 124 1.01
2017/18 133 130 120 0.98
2018/19 135 151 119 1.12
2019/20 132 147 120 1.11
2020/21 134 133 128 0.99
2021/22 130 138 118 1.06
2022/23 115 109 100 0.95
2023/24 118 119 98 1.01
2024/25 135 160 122 1.19
2025/26 129 123 111 0.95
2026/27 122 139 110 1.14

Places offered

122

in 2026/27

Named first choice

139

249 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.1%

110 of 139

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 122 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College 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 John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College, 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 and 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. A 'looked after child' is a child who is (a) in the care of a local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions (see the definition in Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989) at the time of making an application to a school. […] criterion continues in the source document
2 There is a sibling who will still be attending the school when the child is due to start. By sibling we mean:
• A full brother or full sister, whether or not living in the same household.
• Another child normally living for the majority of term time in the same household, for whom an adult in the household has parental responsibility as defined in the Children Act 1989 or Section 576 of the Education Act 1996.
• In the case of twins and where there is only one place available in the College, both will be treated as one application. The College will go above its admission number by one.
3 A student whose parent(s) is presently employed at John Spendluffe Technology College or is/are recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage. This does not include third party contracted persons (building contractors, external services etc).
4 Distance of home from college. JSTC follow the nearest school guidance which can be found via www.lincolnshire.gov.uk . Search for “Find a School”. This will be measured as straight line distance as calculated electronically to three figures after the decimal point (e.g. 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 child’s home address is the address where they live for the majority of the school term time with a parent who has parental responsibility as defined in the Children Act 1989. […] criterion continues in the source document
5 If any of the oversubscription criteria have too many applicants then the tie-break will be distance described in 4 above. The child living closer to the school will be offered the place. In the event that this is the same for two or more children it will be decided by random allocation.
6 Reserve list For admission into the intake year only i.e. Year 7, the governors will keep a waiting list up until December 31st, which we call a reserve list. If we have to refuse a place at our school your child is automatically put on the reserve list, unless you have been offered a higher preference school. This list is in the order of the oversubscription criteria, as required by the school admissions code. This means that names can move down the list if someone moves into the area and is higher placed under the oversubscription criteria. The governors must not take account of the time you have been on the list. […] 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.

John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College'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

625

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

637

101.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

12

reported as full or beyond

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 John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College 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 John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College 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 John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 625 places 616 on roll 2012/13 625 places 595 on roll 2013/14 625 places 555 on roll 2014/15 625 places 516 on roll 2015/16 625 places 522 on roll 2016/17 625 places 561 on roll 2017/18 625 places 562 on roll 2018/19 625 places 590 on roll 2020/21 625 places 627 on roll 2021/22 625 places 628 on roll 2022/23 625 places 624 on roll 2023/24 625 places 623 on roll 2024/25 625 places 637 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 LN13 9BL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136968).

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.