In-year school offers
We will advise you of the outcome of your application within 15 school days. For most schools, we do not make decisions on cases, but we do pass on their response to you.
We only make the decisions for one secondary school (Spalding High School) and infant, primary and junior schools that we maintain. For other schools, we tell you the decision of the school's admissions authority.
If a school has not responded to your application within 15 days, we will write to tell you this. You may wish to complain to the school.
Where a school offers a place, you will not be given a start date, but you will be given a timeframe in which to contact the school.
No school offer
When no school listed on the application offers a place and if you:
- live in Lincolnshire, and your child is not on a school roll, you will be offered the nearest school with a place.
- are moving to Lincolnshire and have provided a move date and an intended address within the next six weeks, we will source an alternative school place within 15 days of your arrival.
- live in Lincolnshire but already have a suitable school place, we will not make a new offer.
- do not live in Lincolnshire, we will not find another school place for you.
- have not provided a move date or new address, we will only make a new offer once you provide this information.
School refusal reasons
After the year which the students enter the school (e.g. Year 3, Year 7), the school can refuse for three reasons:
- they feel that admitting a further student would cause prejudice to the other students on roll.
- the school has space, but the child has challenging behaviour, and the school feels that admitting them would cause prejudice.
- the child has been permanently excluded from two or more schools in two years (exceptions apply).
Challenging behaviour
Where a school has space, they may ask your child's previous school whether they have challenging behaviour. Where the school has reason to believe this is the case, they may refer it under the fair access protocol. We will let you know if this happens, as it may take longer to get a place. These must be agreed upon within 20 days of the referral.
Make an appeal
If a school does not offer you a place, you can appeal. To do this, please follow the appeals process.