School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Skegness Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 59 families who named Skegness Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 71 and 129 put it first.

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

1.82

first choices for every place available

129 first preferences for 71 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Skegness Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Skegness 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

Skegness 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 Skegness 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 1.7 per place 73 first choices 43 places 2016/17 1.43 per place 67 first choices 47 places 2017/18 1.49 per place 85 first choices 57 places 2018/19 1.62 per place 55 first choices 34 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 105 first choices 93 places 2020/21 1.28 per place 123 first choices 96 places 2021/22 1.5 per place 108 first choices 72 places 2022/23 1.34 per place 123 first choices 92 places 2023/24 1.38 per place 112 first choices 81 places 2024/25 1.85 per place 113 first choices 61 places 2025/26 1.76 per place 125 first choices 71 places 2026/27 1.82 per place 129 first choices 71 places
First preferences per place at Skegness Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 129 first preferences for 71 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Skegness 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 43 73 43 1.7
2016/17 47 67 47 1.43
2017/18 57 85 57 1.49
2018/19 34 55 34 1.62
2019/20 93 105 91 1.13
2020/21 96 123 93 1.28
2021/22 72 108 72 1.5
2022/23 92 123 89 1.34
2023/24 81 112 76 1.38
2024/25 61 113 60 1.85
2025/26 71 125 66 1.76
2026/27 71 129 70 1.82

Places offered

71

in 2026/27

Named first choice

129

197 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

54.3%

70 of 129

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 71 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

660

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

536

81.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

124

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

238

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 Skegness 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 Skegness Grammar School reported 124 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 81.2% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Skegness Grammar School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 898 places 621 on roll 2013/14 898 places 568 on roll 2014/15 898 places 561 on roll 2015/16 898 places 536 on roll 2016/17 898 places 508 on roll 2017/18 898 places 472 on roll 2018/19 898 places 459 on roll 2020/21 898 places 590 on roll 2021/22 898 places 630 on roll 2022/23 898 places 661 on roll 2023/24 898 places 664 on roll 2024/25 898 places 629 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 PE25 2QS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138757).

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.