School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Spalding Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 24 families who named Spalding Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 297 put it first and 273 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Lincolnshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

24

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

297 first preferences for 311 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Spalding Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Spalding 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

Spalding Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 10 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Spalding Academy, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.55 per place 122 first choices 223 places 2018/19 0.63 per place 169 first choices 269 places 2019/20 0.82 per place 219 first choices 267 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 241 first choices 265 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 246 first choices 262 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 308 first choices 293 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 312 first choices 291 places 2024/25 0.92 per place 273 first choices 298 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 295 first choices 300 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 297 first choices 311 places
First preferences per place at Spalding Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 297 first preferences for 311 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Spalding Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 223 122 122 0.55
2018/19 269 169 167 0.63
2019/20 267 219 219 0.82
2020/21 265 241 222 0.91
2021/22 262 246 226 0.94
2022/23 293 308 271 1.05
2023/24 291 312 264 1.07
2024/25 298 273 249 0.92
2025/26 300 295 259 0.98
2026/27 311 297 273 0.95

Places offered

311

in 2026/27

Named first choice

297

578 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.9%

273 of 297

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 311 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,440

96% of capacity

Unfilled places

60

across Years 7 to 11

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 Spalding 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 Spalding Academy reported 60 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96% 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Spalding Academy from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,622 places 899 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 925 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,014 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,223 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,315 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,369 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,412 on roll 2024/25 1,500 places 1,440 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 PE11 2EJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144488).

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.