School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at King Edward VI Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named King Edward VI Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 130 and 146 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

146 first preferences for 130 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at King Edward VI Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for King Edward VI 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

King Edward VI Grammar 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 King Edward VI 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 1.1 per place 167 first choices 152 places 2016/17 1.06 per place 156 first choices 147 places 2017/18 1.19 per place 141 first choices 118 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 168 first choices 150 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 173 first choices 143 places 2020/21 1.26 per place 183 first choices 145 places 2021/22 1.29 per place 187 first choices 145 places 2022/23 1.17 per place 170 first choices 145 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 168 first choices 143 places 2024/25 1.39 per place 201 first choices 145 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 153 first choices 137 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 146 first choices 130 places
First preferences per place at King Edward VI Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 146 first preferences for 130 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at King Edward VI 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
2015/16 152 167 150 1.1
2016/17 147 156 144 1.06
2017/18 118 141 117 1.19
2018/19 150 168 146 1.12
2019/20 143 173 139 1.21
2020/21 145 183 143 1.26
2021/22 145 187 141 1.29
2022/23 145 170 143 1.17
2023/24 143 168 140 1.17
2024/25 145 201 143 1.39
2025/26 137 153 135 1.12
2026/27 130 146 125 1.12

Places offered

130

in 2026/27

Named first choice

146

251 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.6%

125 of 146

Offers to families outside the council

29%

38 of 130 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 120701.

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

725

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

755

104.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

30

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 King Edward VI 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 King Edward VI Grammar 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at King Edward VI Grammar School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 812 places 781 on roll 2010/11 811 places 793 on roll 2011/12 844 places 810 on roll 2012/13 844 places 817 on roll 2013/14 854 places 804 on roll 2014/15 854 places 840 on roll 2015/16 854 places 878 on roll 2016/17 854 places 859 on roll 2017/18 854 places 829 on roll 2018/19 854 places 906 on roll 2020/21 975 places 966 on roll 2021/22 975 places 964 on roll 2022/23 975 places 958 on roll 2023/24 975 places 924 on roll 2024/25 975 places 888 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. King Edward VI Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming King Edward VI Grammar School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
2 August 2022 Arrangements did not comply ADA3946

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 LN11 9LL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142262).

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.