School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 102 put it first and 81 of them were offered one.

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

21

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

102 first preferences for 108 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary 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

St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary 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 0.93 per place 71 first choices 76 places 2016/17 0.77 per place 75 first choices 98 places 2017/18 0.79 per place 59 first choices 75 places 2018/19 0.88 per place 101 first choices 115 places 2019/20 0.98 per place 110 first choices 112 places 2020/21 0.49 per place 49 first choices 100 places 2021/22 0.62 per place 53 first choices 85 places 2022/23 0.56 per place 57 first choices 102 places 2023/24 0.69 per place 72 first choices 104 places 2024/25 0.73 per place 79 first choices 108 places 2025/26 0.81 per place 79 first choices 98 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 102 first choices 108 places
First preferences per place at St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 102 first preferences for 108 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary 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 76 71 71 0.93
2016/17 98 75 75 0.77
2017/18 75 59 59 0.79
2018/19 115 101 101 0.88
2019/20 112 110 97 0.98
2020/21 100 49 49 0.49
2021/22 85 53 53 0.62
2022/23 102 57 57 0.56
2023/24 104 72 72 0.69
2024/25 108 79 79 0.73
2025/26 98 79 74 0.81
2026/27 108 102 81 0.94

Places offered

108

in 2026/27

Named first choice

102

229 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.4%

81 of 102

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 108 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

560

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

549

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

11

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

100

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 St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary 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 St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary Academy reported 11 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% 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 St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary Academy from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 628 places 590 on roll 2013/14 628 places 557 on roll 2014/15 660 places 549 on roll 2015/16 660 places 545 on roll 2016/17 660 places 526 on roll 2017/18 660 places 484 on roll 2018/19 660 places 547 on roll 2020/21 660 places 557 on roll 2021/22 660 places 552 on roll 2022/23 660 places 603 on roll 2023/24 660 places 606 on roll 2024/25 660 places 607 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lincolnshire

Postcode LN6 7SX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139623).

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.