School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Priory Pembroke Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named The Priory Pembroke Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 114 put it first and 105 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Lincolnshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

9

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

114 first preferences for 125 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Priory Pembroke Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Priory Pembroke 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

The Priory Pembroke Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 9 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 Priory Pembroke Academy, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 0.85 per place 45 first choices 53 places 2019/20 0.85 per place 57 first choices 67 places 2020/21 0.79 per place 74 first choices 94 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 106 first choices 112 places 2022/23 1.41 per place 155 first choices 110 places 2023/24 1.25 per place 144 first choices 115 places 2024/25 1.25 per place 142 first choices 114 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 126 first choices 113 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 114 first choices 125 places
First preferences per place at The Priory Pembroke Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 114 first preferences for 125 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Priory Pembroke Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 53 45 45 0.85
2019/20 67 57 57 0.85
2020/21 94 74 74 0.79
2021/22 112 106 106 0.95
2022/23 110 155 109 1.41
2023/24 115 144 102 1.25
2024/25 114 142 103 1.25
2025/26 113 126 104 1.12
2026/27 125 114 105 0.91

Places offered

125

in 2026/27

Named first choice

114

383 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.1%

105 of 114

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 125 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

587

97.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

13

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 Priory Pembroke 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 The Priory Pembroke Academy reported 13 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.8% 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Priory Pembroke Academy from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 656 places 179 on roll 2018/19 600 places 225 on roll 2020/21 600 places 343 on roll 2021/22 600 places 451 on roll 2022/23 600 places 523 on roll 2023/24 600 places 559 on roll 2024/25 600 places 587 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lincolnshire

Postcode LN3 4JP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145052).

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.