School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lord Grey Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 11 families who named Lord Grey Academy as their first choice did not get a place: 241 put it first and 230 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Milton Keynes actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

11

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

241 first preferences for 247 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lord Grey Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Lord Grey 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 Milton Keynes 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 Milton Keynes, 11.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 62 of 532 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 Milton Keynes.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Milton Keynes 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

Lord Grey Academy turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 8 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Lord Grey Academy, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.83 per place 222 first choices 268 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 281 first choices 270 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 233 first choices 249 places 2022/23 1.18 per place 287 first choices 243 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 247 first choices 244 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 262 first choices 244 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 252 first choices 246 places 2026/27 0.98 per place 241 first choices 247 places
First preferences per place at Lord Grey Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 241 first preferences for 247 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lord Grey Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 268 222 222 0.83
2020/21 270 281 242 1.04
2021/22 249 233 218 0.94
2022/23 243 287 225 1.18
2023/24 244 247 220 1.01
2024/25 244 262 228 1.07
2025/26 246 252 235 1.02
2026/27 247 241 230 0.98

Places offered

247

in 2026/27

Named first choice

241

423 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.4%

230 of 241

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 247 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

1,210

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,249

103.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

39

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

347

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 Lord Grey 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 Lord Grey 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Lord Grey Academy from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 1,557 places 1,405 on roll 2018/19 1,561 places 1,417 on roll 2020/21 1,561 places 1,448 on roll 2021/22 1,557 places 1,428 on roll 2022/23 1,557 places 1,415 on roll 2023/24 1,557 places 1,414 on roll 2024/25 1,557 places 1,430 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
Milton Keynes

Postcode MK3 6EW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145736).

Other contested secondary schools in Milton Keynes

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.