School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Priory Ruskin Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 63 families who named The Priory Ruskin Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 196 and 224 put it first.

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

1.14

first choices for every place available

224 first preferences for 196 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Priory Ruskin Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Priory Ruskin 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 Ruskin Academy 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 Ruskin Academy, 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 1.09 per place 224 first choices 205 places 2016/17 1.32 per place 270 first choices 205 places 2017/18 1.39 per place 285 first choices 205 places 2018/19 1.57 per place 322 first choices 205 places 2019/20 1.33 per place 280 first choices 210 places 2020/21 1.2 per place 249 first choices 207 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 281 first choices 209 places 2022/23 1.4 per place 273 first choices 195 places 2023/24 1.44 per place 286 first choices 199 places 2024/25 1.19 per place 228 first choices 191 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 227 first choices 203 places 2026/27 1.14 per place 224 first choices 196 places
First preferences per place at The Priory Ruskin Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 224 first preferences for 196 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Priory Ruskin Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 205 224 192 1.09
2016/17 205 270 197 1.32
2017/18 205 285 190 1.39
2018/19 205 322 187 1.57
2019/20 210 280 179 1.33
2020/21 207 249 182 1.2
2021/22 209 281 190 1.34
2022/23 195 273 175 1.4
2023/24 199 286 172 1.44
2024/25 191 228 158 1.19
2025/26 203 227 175 1.12
2026/27 196 224 161 1.14

Places offered

196

in 2026/27

Named first choice

224

606 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

71.9%

161 of 224

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 196 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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,154

109.9% of capacity

Over its capacity by

104

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

200

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 Ruskin 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 Ruskin Academy 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Priory Ruskin Academy from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,250 places 1,022 on roll 2011/12 1,250 places 1,038 on roll 2012/13 1,250 places 1,029 on roll 2013/14 1,250 places 1,021 on roll 2014/15 1,250 places 1,079 on roll 2015/16 1,250 places 1,185 on roll 2016/17 1,250 places 1,231 on roll 2017/18 1,250 places 1,292 on roll 2018/19 1,250 places 1,340 on roll 2020/21 1,250 places 1,382 on roll 2021/22 1,250 places 1,416 on roll 2022/23 1,250 places 1,408 on roll 2023/24 1,250 places 1,401 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 1,367 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 Ruskin Academy has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming The Priory Ruskin Academy. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
26 July 2019 No fault found ADA3498

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 NG31 8ED. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136194).

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.