School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at John Whitgift Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 31 families who named John Whitgift Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 230 and 261 put it first.

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

1.13

first choices for every place available

261 first preferences for 230 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at John Whitgift Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for John Whitgift 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 North East 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 North East Lincolnshire, 40.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 38 of 94 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 North East Lincolnshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not North East 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

John Whitgift Academy turned first-choice families away in 4 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 John Whitgift Academy, 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 0.96 per place 51 first choices 53 places 2016/17 0.74 per place 75 first choices 102 places 2017/18 0.84 per place 78 first choices 93 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 122 first choices 123 places 2019/20 0.97 per place 172 first choices 177 places 2020/21 1.16 per place 205 first choices 177 places 2021/22 1.1 per place 226 first choices 205 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 231 first choices 233 places 2023/24 0.97 per place 227 first choices 234 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 269 first choices 240 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 215 first choices 221 places 2026/27 1.13 per place 261 first choices 230 places
First preferences per place at John Whitgift Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 261 first preferences for 230 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at John Whitgift Academy, 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 53 51 51 0.96
2016/17 102 75 75 0.74
2017/18 93 78 78 0.84
2018/19 123 122 122 0.99
2019/20 177 172 165 0.97
2020/21 177 205 175 1.16
2021/22 205 226 201 1.1
2022/23 233 231 228 0.99
2023/24 234 227 227 0.97
2024/25 240 269 237 1.12
2025/26 221 215 215 0.97
2026/27 230 261 230 1.13

Places offered

230

in 2026/27

Named first choice

261

356 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.1%

230 of 261

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 230 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,034

86.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

166

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 John Whitgift 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 John Whitgift Academy reported 166 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 86.2% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at John Whitgift Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 750 places 633 on roll 2012/13 750 places 577 on roll 2013/14 750 places 518 on roll 2014/15 750 places 460 on roll 2015/16 750 places 397 on roll 2016/17 750 places 426 on roll 2017/18 750 places 445 on roll 2018/19 750 places 522 on roll 2020/21 750 places 733 on roll 2021/22 750 places 817 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 925 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 996 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,034 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
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
North East Lincolnshire

Postcode DN37 9EH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137464).

Other contested secondary schools in North East 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.