School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at William Farr CofE Comprehensive School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 49 families who named William Farr CofE Comprehensive School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 228 and 269 put it first.

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

1.18

first choices for every place available

269 first preferences for 228 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at William Farr CofE Comprehensive School

There is no published appeal success rate for William Farr CofE Comprehensive School, 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

William Farr CofE Comprehensive School turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at William Farr CofE Comprehensive School, 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 1.06 per place 252 first choices 237 places 2016/17 1.21 per place 288 first choices 238 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 292 first choices 233 places 2018/19 1.15 per place 281 first choices 244 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 232 first choices 242 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 269 first choices 244 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 228 first choices 240 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 249 first choices 240 places 2023/24 1.26 per place 300 first choices 239 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 248 first choices 236 places 2025/26 1.12 per place 261 first choices 234 places 2026/27 1.18 per place 269 first choices 228 places
First preferences per place at William Farr CofE Comprehensive School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 269 first preferences for 228 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at William Farr CofE Comprehensive School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 237 252 232 1.06
2016/17 238 288 235 1.21
2017/18 233 292 230 1.25
2018/19 244 281 239 1.15
2019/20 242 232 227 0.96
2020/21 244 269 240 1.1
2021/22 240 228 218 0.95
2022/23 240 249 222 1.04
2023/24 239 300 230 1.26
2024/25 236 248 226 1.05
2025/26 234 261 227 1.12
2026/27 228 269 220 1.18

Places offered

228

in 2026/27

Named first choice

269

509 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

81.8%

220 of 269

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 228 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

1,196

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,235

103.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

39

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 William Farr CofE Comprehensive School 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 William Farr CofE Comprehensive School 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 William Farr CofE Comprehensive School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,496 places 1,520 on roll 2011/12 1,496 places 1,511 on roll 2012/13 1,496 places 1,492 on roll 2013/14 1,496 places 1,485 on roll 2014/15 1,500 places 1,471 on roll 2015/16 1,500 places 1,435 on roll 2016/17 1,496 places 1,452 on roll 2017/18 1,496 places 1,482 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 1,448 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,441 on roll 2021/22 1,496 places 1,447 on roll 2022/23 1,496 places 1,424 on roll 2023/24 1,496 places 1,439 on roll 2024/25 1,496 places 1,480 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 LN2 3JB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136415).

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.