School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Boston Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named The Boston Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 136 and 163 put it first.

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

1.20

first choices for every place available

163 first preferences for 136 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Boston Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for The Boston 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

The Boston 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 The Boston 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 1.14 per place 109 first choices 96 places 2016/17 1.22 per place 120 first choices 98 places 2017/18 1.22 per place 118 first choices 97 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 145 first choices 117 places 2019/20 1.28 per place 139 first choices 109 places 2020/21 1.19 per place 133 first choices 112 places 2021/22 1.3 per place 158 first choices 122 places 2022/23 1.19 per place 125 first choices 105 places 2023/24 1.28 per place 141 first choices 110 places 2024/25 1.31 per place 153 first choices 117 places 2025/26 1.27 per place 165 first choices 130 places 2026/27 1.2 per place 163 first choices 136 places
First preferences per place at The Boston Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 163 first preferences for 136 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Boston 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 96 109 96 1.14
2016/17 98 120 98 1.22
2017/18 97 118 93 1.22
2018/19 117 145 113 1.24
2019/20 109 139 105 1.28
2020/21 112 133 104 1.19
2021/22 122 158 119 1.3
2022/23 105 125 101 1.19
2023/24 110 141 107 1.28
2024/25 117 153 113 1.31
2025/26 130 165 129 1.27
2026/27 136 163 134 1.2

Places offered

136

in 2026/27

Named first choice

163

220 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

82.2%

134 of 163

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 136 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

600

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

659

109.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

59

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

310

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 Boston 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 The Boston Grammar School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Boston Grammar School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 700 places 532 on roll 2013/14 700 places 525 on roll 2014/15 760 places 560 on roll 2015/16 760 places 594 on roll 2016/17 760 places 613 on roll 2017/18 784 places 674 on roll 2018/19 792 places 765 on roll 2020/21 910 places 812 on roll 2021/22 910 places 814 on roll 2022/23 910 places 853 on roll 2023/24 910 places 869 on roll 2024/25 910 places 873 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 PE21 6JY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139180).

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.