School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at The Priory Witham Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named The Priory Witham Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 88 put it first and 85 of them were offered one.

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

3

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

88 first preferences for 127 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at The Priory Witham Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for The Priory Witham 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 Witham Academy turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at The Priory Witham 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 0.95 per place 88 first choices 93 places 2016/17 0.92 per place 89 first choices 97 places 2017/18 0.87 per place 72 first choices 83 places 2018/19 0.98 per place 101 first choices 103 places 2019/20 0.87 per place 107 first choices 123 places 2020/21 1.06 per place 136 first choices 128 places 2021/22 0.9 per place 113 first choices 125 places 2022/23 1.02 per place 130 first choices 128 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 116 first choices 120 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 111 first choices 123 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 116 first choices 119 places 2026/27 0.69 per place 88 first choices 127 places
First preferences per place at The Priory Witham Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 88 first preferences for 127 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at The Priory Witham 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 93 88 88 0.95
2016/17 97 89 89 0.92
2017/18 83 72 72 0.87
2018/19 103 101 92 0.98
2019/20 123 107 107 0.87
2020/21 128 136 113 1.06
2021/22 125 113 109 0.9
2022/23 128 130 116 1.02
2023/24 120 116 108 0.97
2024/25 123 111 100 0.9
2025/26 119 116 99 0.97
2026/27 127 88 85 0.69

Places offered

127

in 2026/27

Named first choice

88

289 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

96.6%

85 of 88

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 127 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

770

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

980

127.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

210

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 Witham 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 Witham 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at The Priory Witham Academy from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 870 places 861 on roll 2010/11 1,000 places 878 on roll 2011/12 970 places 860 on roll 2012/13 970 places 859 on roll 2013/14 970 places 894 on roll 2014/15 970 places 922 on roll 2015/16 970 places 942 on roll 2016/17 970 places 939 on roll 2017/18 970 places 915 on roll 2018/19 970 places 932 on roll 2020/21 970 places 1,004 on roll 2021/22 970 places 1,012 on roll 2022/23 970 places 995 on roll 2023/24 970 places 1,034 on roll 2024/25 970 places 1,026 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 LN6 7DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135563).

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.