School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Spalding Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 30 families who named Spalding Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 146 and 153 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

153 first preferences for 146 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Spalding Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Spalding 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

Spalding 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 Spalding 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 1.19 per place 155 first choices 130 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 117 first choices 112 places 2017/18 1.15 per place 134 first choices 117 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 132 first choices 109 places 2019/20 1.25 per place 186 first choices 149 places 2020/21 1.09 per place 163 first choices 149 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 190 first choices 149 places 2022/23 1.06 per place 148 first choices 139 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 173 first choices 149 places 2024/25 1.14 per place 170 first choices 149 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 151 first choices 147 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 153 first choices 146 places
First preferences per place at Spalding Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 153 first preferences for 146 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Spalding 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
2015/16 130 155 126 1.19
2016/17 112 117 103 1.04
2017/18 117 134 110 1.15
2018/19 109 132 98 1.21
2019/20 149 186 136 1.25
2020/21 149 163 134 1.09
2021/22 149 190 138 1.28
2022/23 139 148 126 1.06
2023/24 149 173 131 1.16
2024/25 149 170 130 1.14
2025/26 147 151 116 1.03
2026/27 146 153 123 1.05

Places offered

146

in 2026/27

Named first choice

153

271 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.4%

123 of 153

Offers to families outside the council

36%

53 of 146 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

740

98.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

10

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

320

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 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 Spalding Grammar School reported 10 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.7% 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 Spalding Grammar School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,070 places 945 on roll 2013/14 1,070 places 978 on roll 2014/15 1,070 places 983 on roll 2015/16 1,070 places 979 on roll 2016/17 1,070 places 946 on roll 2017/18 1,070 places 888 on roll 2018/19 1,044 places 861 on roll 2020/21 1,070 places 894 on roll 2021/22 1,070 places 936 on roll 2022/23 1,070 places 966 on roll 2023/24 1,070 places 997 on roll 2024/25 1,070 places 992 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 PE11 2XH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139304).

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.