School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Thomas Middlecott Academy?

In 2026/27, Thomas Middlecott Academy offered 115 places and 79 families named it as their first choice.

Below: what an appeal in Lincolnshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

0.69

first choices for every place available

79 first preferences for 115 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Thomas Middlecott Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Thomas Middlecott 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

Thomas Middlecott Academy turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 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 Thomas Middlecott Academy, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.84 per place 66 first choices 79 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 79 first choices 86 places 2018/19 0.89 per place 96 first choices 108 places 2019/20 0.74 per place 77 first choices 104 places 2020/21 0.75 per place 86 first choices 115 places 2021/22 0.62 per place 75 first choices 120 places 2022/23 0.74 per place 88 first choices 119 places 2023/24 0.77 per place 91 first choices 118 places 2024/25 0.89 per place 98 first choices 110 places 2025/26 1.06 per place 121 first choices 114 places 2026/27 0.69 per place 79 first choices 115 places
First preferences per place at Thomas Middlecott Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 79 first preferences for 115 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Thomas Middlecott Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 79 66 66 0.84
2017/18 86 79 79 0.92
2018/19 108 96 84 0.89
2019/20 104 77 77 0.74
2020/21 115 86 86 0.75
2021/22 120 75 75 0.62
2022/23 119 88 86 0.74
2023/24 118 91 91 0.77
2024/25 110 98 97 0.89
2025/26 114 121 93 1.06
2026/27 115 79 79 0.69

Places offered

115

in 2026/27

Named first choice

79

220 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

79 of 79

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 112 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

635

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

601

94.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

34

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 Thomas Middlecott 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 Thomas Middlecott Academy reported 34 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.6% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Thomas Middlecott Academy from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 540 places 468 on roll 2015/16 540 places 471 on roll 2016/17 635 places 473 on roll 2017/18 635 places 482 on roll 2018/19 635 places 503 on roll 2020/21 635 places 542 on roll 2021/22 635 places 571 on roll 2022/23 635 places 574 on roll 2023/24 635 places 578 on roll 2024/25 635 places 601 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 PE20 1JS. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141391).

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.