School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Banovallum School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named The Banovallum School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 118 and 121 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

121 first preferences for 118 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Banovallum School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Banovallum 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

The Banovallum School turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at The Banovallum 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 0.94 per place 117 first choices 124 places 2016/17 0.95 per place 108 first choices 114 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 116 first choices 123 places 2018/19 0.92 per place 98 first choices 106 places 2019/20 0.93 per place 121 first choices 130 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 110 first choices 121 places 2021/22 0.92 per place 101 first choices 110 places 2022/23 0.88 per place 98 first choices 111 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 134 first choices 115 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 122 first choices 118 places 2025/26 0.95 per place 111 first choices 117 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 121 first choices 118 places
First preferences per place at The Banovallum School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 121 first preferences for 118 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Banovallum School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 124 117 117 0.94
2016/17 114 108 108 0.95
2017/18 123 116 115 0.94
2018/19 106 98 98 0.92
2019/20 130 121 116 0.93
2020/21 121 110 109 0.91
2021/22 110 101 97 0.92
2022/23 111 98 98 0.88
2023/24 115 134 110 1.17
2024/25 118 122 109 1.03
2025/26 117 111 103 0.95
2026/27 118 121 107 1.03

Places offered

118

in 2026/27

Named first choice

121

251 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.4%

107 of 121

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 118 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

625

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

608

97.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

17

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 The Banovallum 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 The Banovallum School reported 17 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.3% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Banovallum School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 625 places 601 on roll 2015/16 625 places 594 on roll 2016/17 625 places 594 on roll 2017/18 625 places 583 on roll 2018/19 625 places 590 on roll 2020/21 625 places 617 on roll 2021/22 625 places 605 on roll 2022/23 625 places 598 on roll 2023/24 625 places 609 on roll 2024/25 625 places 608 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 LN9 6DA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141581).

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.