School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The King's School, Grantham?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 109 families who named The King's School, Grantham as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 171 and 280 put it first.

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

1.64

first choices for every place available

280 first preferences for 171 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The King's School, Grantham

There is no published appeal success rate for The King's School, Grantham, 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 King's School, Grantham 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 King's School, Grantham, 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 1.22 per place 211 first choices 173 places 2016/17 1.11 per place 205 first choices 185 places 2017/18 1.12 per place 209 first choices 186 places 2018/19 1.3 per place 243 first choices 187 places 2019/20 1.36 per place 236 first choices 174 places 2020/21 1.19 per place 207 first choices 174 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 200 first choices 174 places 2022/23 1.28 per place 220 first choices 172 places 2023/24 1.11 per place 191 first choices 172 places 2024/25 1.46 per place 248 first choices 170 places 2025/26 1.3 per place 227 first choices 174 places 2026/27 1.64 per place 280 first choices 171 places
First preferences per place at The King's School, Grantham. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 280 first preferences for 171 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The King's School, Grantham, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 173 211 170 1.22
2016/17 185 205 183 1.11
2017/18 186 209 183 1.12
2018/19 187 243 183 1.3
2019/20 174 236 172 1.36
2020/21 174 207 172 1.19
2021/22 174 200 166 1.15
2022/23 172 220 162 1.28
2023/24 172 191 163 1.11
2024/25 170 248 166 1.46
2025/26 174 227 169 1.3
2026/27 171 280 171 1.64

Places offered

171

in 2026/27

Named first choice

280

348 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

61.1%

171 of 280

Offers to families outside the council

52%

89 of 171 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

805

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

895

111.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

90

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

350

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 King's School, Grantham 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 King's School, Grantham 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The King's School, Grantham from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,086 places 1,026 on roll 2012/13 1,086 places 1,019 on roll 2013/14 1,104 places 1,014 on roll 2014/15 1,104 places 1,038 on roll 2015/16 1,104 places 1,083 on roll 2016/17 1,104 places 1,117 on roll 2017/18 1,104 places 1,135 on roll 2018/19 1,165 places 1,170 on roll 2020/21 1,220 places 1,205 on roll 2021/22 1,220 places 1,182 on roll 2022/23 1,220 places 1,188 on roll 2023/24 1,155 places 1,200 on roll 2024/25 1,155 places 1,213 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 NG31 6RP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137166).

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.