Sleaford, Lincolnshire · Lincolnshire
Carre's Grammar School
Went from Inadequate to Good across every category in eighteen months — a fast Ofsted turnaround worth knowing about, alongside a qualifying score the school itself declines to publish.
Carre's own admissions policy deliberately withholds its numeric qualifying score, describing it only as 'the school's agreed minimum standard' — the widely-cited figure of 220 comes only from tutoring sites, since Lincolnshire's own consortium page was inaccessible during this research. What is confirmed directly from the school's policy: admission is a pass/fail threshold, not a score-ranking system, with oversubscription resolved by care status, Pupil Premium, siblings, then distance. Also worth knowing: an Inadequate safeguarding-led rating in June 2022 was followed by a full recovery to Good across every category by December 2023 — an unusually fast turnaround worth mentioning alongside the current rating rather than in isolation.
Key facts
- Gender
- boys
- Age range
- 11-18
- Region
- East Midlands
- Local authority
- Lincolnshire
- Established
- 1604
- DfE URN
- 137213
- Website
- https://www.carres.uk
Admissions
- Admissions authority
- The school sets its own test and criteria
- Entrance test board
- The Lincolnshire Consortium of Grammar Schools' shared 11+ test, set by GL Assessment.
- Test format
- Reported by secondary tutoring sources (not confirmed in the school's own policy, which describes only 'the 11+ selection tests' without detail) as Verbal Reasoning and Non-Verbal/Spatial Reasoning papers, with no maths or English component, sat over two days in September of Year 6.partly verified
Paper composition comes from tutoring sites, not confirmed in the school's own policy or an accessible consortium page.
- Qualifying / pass mark
- Widely reported as a standardised score of 220 out of a maximum 282, matching the Lincolnshire Consortium's standard — but genuinely unconfirmed at a primary source. The school's own admissions policy deliberately withholds a number, referring only to 'the school's agreed minimum standard', and the consortium's own page was inaccessible during this research.verify with school
The 220/282 figure comes only from tutoring sites. The school's own policy deliberately withholds a number, and the Lincolnshire Consortium's own page returned a genuine server-level access block during this research, not just a soft restriction.
- Superselective?
- No
Not explicitly declared either way by the school, but reasoned directly from its own admissions policy: admission uses a pass/fail qualifying threshold rather than strict rank-by-score, and oversubscription is resolved by care status, Pupil Premium, siblings, then straight-line distance — never by test score. The school's own in-year assessment route separately targets 'the top 25% of the ability range,' the standard broad grammar-school band rather than a narrower superselective one.
Catchment & priority criteria
No catchment or designated area appears anywhere in the oversubscription criteria. After the qualifying threshold, priority runs on care status, Pupil Premium, siblings, then plain straight-line distance.
- Children with an EHCP naming the school
- Looked-after and previously looked-after children
- Pupil Premium-eligible children
- Siblings at a secondary school within the same trust (recently renamed from Robert Carre Trust to Community Inclusive Trust)
- Nearest by straight-line distance; independent lottery for the final place
Results
| Year | Attainment 8 | GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths | Progress 8 | A*–A | A*–B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 57.2 (partly-verified — decoded from a chart rather than a labelled table) | 67.0% (Lincolnshire LA average 42.8%, England state-funded 45.9%) | -0.01 ('Average', confidence interval -0.29 to +0.26) — this cohort's KS2 baseline predates the COVID-era gap | — | — |
| 2025 | 58.0 | 78.3% (Lincolnshire LA average 41.9%, England state-funded 45.4%) | Not calculated — no KS2 baseline data for this cohort nationally | verify with school | verify with school |
| A-level (101 students): average grade B- (35.83 points per entry, England state-funded average also B-/36.1, Lincolnshire average C+/34.44), value-added progress score +0.14 ('Above average', confidence interval +0.02 to +0.27), retention 96.8%. EBacc entry 68.9%. Note: DfE separately reports a much larger 'Sleaford Joint Sixth Form' result set (245 A-level students) pooling Carre's with its two Sleaford sixth-form partners — the figures above are specific to Carre's own URN. | |||||
Ofsted
- Rating
- Good, in every category: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and sixth-form provision. This followed a rapid recovery: the school was rated Inadequate at a safeguarding-led inspection in June 2022, had an ungraded monitoring visit in February 2023, then returned to Good across the board by December 2023.
- Date
- 5-6 December 2023
- Report
- Read the full report
Sources
- 1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, LA — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/137213
- 2. School's own Admissions Policy 2027-2028 — https://www.carres.lincs.sch.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=1118&type=pdf
- 3. Lincolnshire County Council — Co-ordinated admissions scheme for Secondary Schools 2026 to 2027 — https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/downloads/file/10383/secondary-schools-co-ordinated-scheme-2026-27
- 4. Ofsted report, Good, inspected 5-6 December 2023 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50238062
- 5. DfE Compare School Performance — Progress 8, 2023 and 2024 — https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/137213/carre-s-grammar-school/secondary/progress-measures-for-2023-and-2024
- 6. DfE Compare School Performance — Advanced level qualifications — https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/137213/carre-s-grammar-school/16-to-18/advanced-level-qualifications
Last updated 2026-09-01. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.