School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Priory Academy LSST?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 233 families who named The Priory Academy LSST as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 232 and 438 put it first.

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

1.89

first choices for every place available

438 first preferences for 232 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Priory Academy LSST

There is no published appeal success rate for The Priory Academy LSST, 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 Priory Academy LSST 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 Priory Academy LSST, 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 1.39 per place 343 first choices 246 places 2016/17 1.42 per place 346 first choices 243 places 2017/18 1.47 per place 352 first choices 240 places 2018/19 1.53 per place 365 first choices 239 places 2019/20 1.6 per place 385 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.52 per place 366 first choices 241 places 2021/22 1.65 per place 392 first choices 237 places 2022/23 1.45 per place 347 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.84 per place 428 first choices 233 places 2024/25 1.68 per place 401 first choices 238 places 2025/26 1.64 per place 385 first choices 235 places 2026/27 1.89 per place 438 first choices 232 places
First preferences per place at The Priory Academy LSST. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 438 first preferences for 232 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Priory Academy LSST, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 246 343 240 1.39
2016/17 243 346 235 1.42
2017/18 240 352 233 1.47
2018/19 239 365 236 1.53
2019/20 240 385 235 1.6
2020/21 241 366 229 1.52
2021/22 237 392 227 1.65
2022/23 240 347 224 1.45
2023/24 233 428 213 1.84
2024/25 238 401 217 1.68
2025/26 235 385 217 1.64
2026/27 232 438 205 1.89

Places offered

232

in 2026/27

Named first choice

438

953 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

46.8%

205 of 438

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 232 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,316

109.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

116

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

500

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 Priory Academy LSST 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 Priory Academy LSST 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Priory Academy LSST from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 950 1,900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,700 places 1,789 on roll 2010/11 1,700 places 1,781 on roll 2011/12 1,680 places 1,808 on roll 2012/13 1,900 places 1,870 on roll 2013/14 1,900 places 1,878 on roll 2014/15 1,800 places 1,871 on roll 2015/16 1,800 places 1,880 on roll 2016/17 1,800 places 1,856 on roll 2017/18 1,700 places 1,824 on roll 2018/19 1,700 places 1,803 on roll 2020/21 1,700 places 1,778 on roll 2021/22 1,700 places 1,769 on roll 2022/23 1,700 places 1,752 on roll 2023/24 1,700 places 1,768 on roll 2024/25 1,700 places 1,752 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. The Priory Academy LSST has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Priory Academy LSST. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
12 August 2019 No fault found ADA3497

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lincolnshire

Postcode LN5 8PW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135565).

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.