The Priory City of Lincoln Academy
Academy · ages 11–18 · with a sixth form
Below average on every headline measure — 49th of 54 for average grade in Lincolnshire.
Lincoln · Lincolnshire · one of 54 state secondaries
Summary
The Priory City of Lincoln Academy sits 49th of 54 state secondaries in Lincolnshire for average GCSE grade. 50% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 62.9% across Lincolnshire. 29.3% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject only business studies and religious studies sits measurably behind Lincolnshire. Ofsted: Inspected in December 2025 under the current report card, which grades 8 areas separately and gives no overall word.
It is an academy of 922 pupils, taking ages 11 to 18 and running its own sixth form. 36.5% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, a high share by national standards, and 22.4% are on SEN support with a further 3.4% holding an education, health and care plan. 23.6% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 37.2% entered across Lincolnshire, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 30.5% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 35.2% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, worse than the 23.4% across Lincolnshire, and 76.6% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Lincolnshire, and count as ahead or behind only where the gap is wider than the year-to-year swing that entry group would produce.
The school·Lincolnshire
Inspection
Graded by area
Last inspected December 2025
- Achievement
- Needs attention
- Attendance and behaviour
- Needs attention
- Curriculum and teaching
- Needs attention
- Inclusion
- Needs attention
- Leadership and management
- Needs attention
- Personal development
- Expected standard
- Safeguarding
- Met
- December 2025 Report card inspection Graded by area
- May 2023 Full inspection Requires improvement
Ofsted’s current report card grades each area separately and gives no overall word.
Attendance
35% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 23% across Lincolnshire and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
24%
Entered for the EBacc the academic core of subjects
well below average
Lincolnshire 37% · England 41%
After Year 11
77% stayed in education, 4% started an apprenticeship (2022/23 leavers)
GCSE results by subject
2024/25 · share reaching grade 4 or above · a standard pass, the old grade C
Every bar is on the same 0–100% scale, so subjects can be read against each other as well as against the county and England. A dash means the figure does not exist rather than being zero. The county and England lines cover state-funded schools only, the same schools you can browse here, because independent schools sit outside the Department for Education's subject release and outside this site.
Compare these subjects against another school, side by side.
English Language is the subject most of this year group sat. English Language tutors on Tutorperch.
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Sixth form · Key stage 5·2024/25
Sixth form
2024/25 · 23 A level students
Ofsted rated sixth-form provision Expected standard at the last inspection
C+
Best three A levelsthe grade a typical offer asks for
8%
AAB or betterat least two in facilitating subjects
below average
Lincolnshire 13.9% · England 12.8%
100%
Stayed the coursefinished what they started
in line with average
Lincolnshire 97.1% · England 95.7%
Applied general qualifications: average result Merit, 25 students, 84.6% stayed the course. These are BTECs and similar, graded pass to distinction* rather than A* to E, so the two cannot be compared directly.
A level results by subject
2024/25 · share reaching B or above
After sixth form
Of the 61 students who finished, 34.4% went on to higher education, 19.7% to an apprenticeship, and 26.2% into work. 83.6% were in a sustained destination of some kind six months later.
Destinations are for 2022/23 leavers, the most recent DfE has published. The results above are 2024/25.
What these mean
- Attainment 8
- The average pupil's total score across eight GCSE-equivalent subjects, with English and maths counting double. It is scored out of 90. A score of 50 is roughly equivalent to achieving a grade 5 across eight subjects.
- Grades 4 and 5
- GCSEs are graded from 9 down to 1. Grade 4 is a standard pass and broadly corresponds to the old grade C; grade 5 is what the government calls a strong pass. Grade 7 is broadly equivalent to an old grade A.
- The EBacc
- A combination of subjects rather than a qualification in its own right: English, Maths, the Sciences, a Language, and History or Geography. The figure shows the share of pupils entered for all the EBacc subject areas, so it gives an indication of how widely a school enters pupils for this particular combination of subjects.
- Progress 8
- A measure of how much progress pupils make between the end of primary school and the end of GCSE, rather than simply what grades they achieve. It takes pupils' prior attainment into account, making it useful for comparing schools with different intakes. Progress 8 is not published for 2024/25 because the pupils concerned did not have Key Stage 2 tests that can be used as the normal starting point.
- Percentage points
- The gap between two percentages. A subject going from 30% to 36% has risen six percentage points, though it has risen by a fifth. We write "pp" to keep the two apart.
- Why some subjects say nothing
- A year group is small. Where a gap is no bigger than the swing a different intake would produce, we say the subjects are level rather than dressing chance as a finding. Two kinds of subject carry no share at all: a vocational award has no 9-to-1 grade to report, and some qualifications are not published on the 9-to-1 scale for a given year group, most often community languages sat outside the school's own timetable.
- Persistent absence
- The share of pupils who miss at least 10% of their possible sessions during the school year. This includes both authorised and unauthorised absence, so illness and other authorised reasons are included. Persistent absence has remained substantially higher than its pre-pandemic level.
- Spare places
- The amount of available capacity a school has compared with the number of pupils on roll. This is different from oversubscription: spare places measure whether a school has capacity, whereas oversubscription describes demand for places exceeding the number available. A school with no spare places may be popular, but a small school can also be full without receiving a large number of applications.
- Grades not published
- Where a subject was sat by only a few students, the Department for Education publishes how many entered and withholds the grades, so that individual students cannot be identified from the figures. The subject is shown, because the school does teach it, but there is nothing to compare. Most A level groups are small enough for this to apply somewhere on a page.
- Average A-level grade
- The average grade achieved across students' A-level entries. This is different from measures such as the proportion achieving AAB or better in two or more facilitating subjects, which are sometimes used to indicate higher attainment and university-entry performance.
School details
Skellingthorpe Road
Lincoln
Lincolnshire
LN6 0EP
- Headteacher
- Mr Martin Whitaker
- Trust
- The Priory Federation of Academies
- Pupils
- 922 of 900 places
- Spare places
- None
- Free school meals
- 37%
- SEND
- 22% on SEN support, 3% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 31% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last -0.64 in 2023/24
Other schools in Lincolnshire
53 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- St Peter and St Paul, Catholic Voluntary Academy 0.7 km
- The Priory Witham Academy 1 km
- The Priory Academy LSST 1.9 km
- Sir Robert Pattinson Academy 3.2 km
- North Kesteven Academy 3.3 km
- Lincoln UTC 3.4 km
- Lincoln Castle Academy 4.4 km
- Lincoln Christ's Hospital School 4.5 km
- Branston Community Academy 7.3 km
- The Priory Pembroke Academy 8.5 km
- William Farr CofE Comprehensive School 11.6 km
- Sir William Robertson Academy, Welbourn 16.3 km
- The Gainsborough Academy 24.9 km
- De Aston School 25.1 km
- Carre's Grammar School 25.8 km
- The Queen Elizabeth's High School, Gainsborough 25.9 km
- St George's Academy 25.9 km
- Kesteven and Sleaford High School Selective Academy 26.4 km
- The Barnes Wallis Academy 28.7 km
- Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Horncastle 30.1 km
- The Banovallum School 30.9 km
- The Priory Ruskin Academy 32.5 km
- The King's School, Grantham 33.4 km
- Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School 33.6 km
- West Grantham Church of England Secondary Academy 34.5 km
- Walton Academy 35.5 km
- Caistor Grammar School 35.7 km
- Caistor Yarborough Academy 36.1 km
- William Lovell Church of England Academy 40.8 km
- King Edward VI Grammar School 41.1 km
- Louth Academy 42 km
- Cowley Academy 42.4 km
- Haven High Academy 44.4 km
- King Edward VI Academy 44.6 km
- Charles Read Academy 45 km
- Boston High School 45.1 km
- The Boston Grammar School 45.5 km
- Thomas Middlecott Academy 47 km
- The Giles Academy 49.3 km
- Queen Elizabeth's Grammar Alford - A Selective Academy 49.8 km
- John Spendluffe Foundation Technology College 50.6 km
- Bourne Academy 50.7 km
- Bourne Grammar School 51.9 km
- Somercotes Academy 53.8 km
- Spalding Grammar School 55.4 km
- Spalding High School 55.8 km
- Spalding Academy 55.8 km
- University Academy Holbeach 59.8 km
- Skegness Academy 60.6 km
- Skegness Grammar School 60.9 km
- Stamford Welland Academy 61.8 km
- The Deepings School 62.7 km
- University Academy Long Sutton 66.3 km