School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 116 put it first and 98 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Lincolnshire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 6 years of official figures.

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

116 first preferences for 123 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for West Grantham Church of England Secondary 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

West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy turned first-choice families away in 1 of the last 6 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy, 2021/22 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 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2021/22 0.21 per place 23 first choices 110 places 2022/23 0.25 per place 32 first choices 127 places 2023/24 0.31 per place 39 first choices 127 places 2024/25 0.53 per place 55 first choices 103 places 2025/26 0.88 per place 106 first choices 120 places 2026/27 0.94 per place 116 first choices 123 places
First preferences per place at West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 116 first preferences for 123 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2021/22 110 23 23 0.21
2022/23 127 32 32 0.25
2023/24 127 39 39 0.31
2024/25 103 55 55 0.53
2025/26 120 106 106 0.88
2026/27 123 116 98 0.94

Places offered

123

in 2026/27

Named first choice

116

283 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.5%

98 of 116

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 123 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

415

69.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

185

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 West Grantham Church of England Secondary 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 West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy reported 185 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 69.2% 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 West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 625 places 325 on roll 2021/22 625 places 309 on roll 2022/23 625 places 308 on roll 2023/24 600 places 343 on roll 2024/25 600 places 415 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lincolnshire

Postcode NG31 7PX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 148433).

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.