School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 88 families who named Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 180 and 268 put it first.

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

1.49

first choices for every place available

268 first preferences for 180 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School

There is no published appeal success rate for Kesteven and Grantham Girls' 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

Kesteven and Grantham Girls' 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 Kesteven and Grantham Girls' 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 1.14 per place 198 first choices 174 places 2016/17 1.07 per place 179 first choices 168 places 2017/18 1.26 per place 218 first choices 173 places 2018/19 1.37 per place 238 first choices 174 places 2019/20 1.32 per place 228 first choices 173 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 196 first choices 173 places 2021/22 1.23 per place 213 first choices 173 places 2022/23 1.09 per place 186 first choices 171 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 227 first choices 173 places 2024/25 1.3 per place 227 first choices 174 places 2025/26 1.21 per place 211 first choices 174 places 2026/27 1.49 per place 268 first choices 180 places
First preferences per place at Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 268 first preferences for 180 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 174 198 173 1.14
2016/17 168 179 167 1.07
2017/18 173 218 173 1.26
2018/19 174 238 170 1.37
2019/20 173 228 172 1.32
2020/21 173 196 171 1.13
2021/22 173 213 170 1.23
2022/23 171 186 169 1.09
2023/24 173 227 170 1.31
2024/25 174 227 172 1.3
2025/26 174 211 174 1.21
2026/27 180 268 180 1.49

Places offered

180

in 2026/27

Named first choice

268

339 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67.2%

180 of 268

Offers to families outside the council

17%

30 of 180 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

870

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

905

104% of capacity

Over its capacity by

35

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

330

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 Kesteven and Grantham Girls' 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 Kesteven and Grantham Girls' 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,200 places 1,189 on roll 2013/14 1,200 places 1,203 on roll 2014/15 1,220 places 1,197 on roll 2015/16 1,220 places 1,198 on roll 2016/17 1,220 places 1,200 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 1,214 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 1,210 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 1,205 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,189 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,202 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,188 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,199 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 NG31 9AU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138638).

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.