School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 30 families who named Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 124 and 148 put it first.

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

1.19

first choices for every place available

148 first preferences for 124 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective 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

Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective Academy 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 Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective 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 0.97 per place 116 first choices 120 places 2016/17 1.03 per place 109 first choices 106 places 2017/18 1 per place 124 first choices 124 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 117 first choices 122 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 134 first choices 127 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 111 first choices 114 places 2021/22 1.07 per place 133 first choices 124 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 146 first choices 143 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 119 first choices 121 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 132 first choices 131 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 107 first choices 103 places 2026/27 1.19 per place 148 first choices 124 places
First preferences per place at Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 148 first preferences for 124 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 120 116 112 0.97
2016/17 106 109 104 1.03
2017/18 124 124 114 1
2018/19 122 117 106 0.96
2019/20 127 134 117 1.06
2020/21 114 111 107 0.97
2021/22 124 133 121 1.07
2022/23 143 146 139 1.02
2023/24 121 119 112 0.98
2024/25 131 132 123 1.01
2025/26 103 107 99 1.04
2026/27 124 148 118 1.19

Places offered

124

in 2026/27

Named first choice

148

273 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.7%

118 of 148

Offers to families outside the council

6%

7 of 124 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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

633

105.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

33

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

222

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 Sleaford High School Selective 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 Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective Academy 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 Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective Academy 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 2011/12 822 places 833 on roll 2012/13 822 places 824 on roll 2013/14 822 places 788 on roll 2014/15 822 places 767 on roll 2015/16 822 places 740 on roll 2016/17 822 places 741 on roll 2017/18 822 places 733 on roll 2018/19 822 places 733 on roll 2020/21 822 places 752 on roll 2021/22 822 places 757 on roll 2022/23 822 places 761 on roll 2023/24 822 places 768 on roll 2024/25 822 places 755 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 NG34 7RS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137667).

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.