School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at University Academy Long Sutton?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named University Academy Long Sutton as their first choice did not get a place: 121 put it first and 120 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Lincolnshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 7 years of official figures.

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

121 first preferences for 131 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at University Academy Long Sutton

There is no published appeal success rate for University Academy Long Sutton, 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

University Academy Long Sutton turned first-choice families away in 2 of the last 7 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at University Academy Long Sutton, 2020/21 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 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2020/21 0.95 per place 125 first choices 131 places 2021/22 0.83 per place 95 first choices 115 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 107 first choices 111 places 2023/24 0.85 per place 120 first choices 142 places 2024/25 1.04 per place 146 first choices 140 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 149 first choices 136 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 121 first choices 131 places
First preferences per place at University Academy Long Sutton. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 121 first preferences for 131 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at University Academy Long Sutton, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2020/21 131 125 125 0.95
2021/22 115 95 95 0.83
2022/23 111 107 107 0.96
2023/24 142 120 120 0.85
2024/25 140 146 132 1.04
2025/26 136 149 133 1.1
2026/27 131 121 120 0.92

Places offered

131

in 2026/27

Named first choice

121

220 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.2%

120 of 121

Offers to families outside the council

21%

28 of 131 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

720

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

697

96.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

23

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 University Academy Long Sutton 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 University Academy Long Sutton reported 23 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.8% 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, 2020/21 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at University Academy Long Sutton from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 720 places 700 on roll 2021/22 720 places 706 on roll 2022/23 720 places 701 on roll 2023/24 720 places 715 on roll 2024/25 720 places 697 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 PE12 9LF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147268).

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.