School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Academy Beckenham?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 135 families who named Harris Academy Beckenham as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 199 and 264 put it first.

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

1.33

first choices for every place available

264 first preferences for 199 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Academy Beckenham

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Academy Beckenham, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Bromley 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 Bromley, 5.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 21 of 390 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 Bromley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Bromley 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

Harris Academy Beckenham turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 6 of those years. In the other 6 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Harris Academy Beckenham, 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 0.68 per place 149 first choices 220 places 2016/17 0.64 per place 131 first choices 205 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 197 first choices 199 places 2018/19 1.13 per place 239 first choices 212 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 206 first choices 215 places 2020/21 0.9 per place 182 first choices 202 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 194 first choices 200 places 2022/23 1.17 per place 257 first choices 220 places 2023/24 1.4 per place 302 first choices 216 places 2024/25 1.69 per place 298 first choices 176 places 2025/26 1.66 per place 331 first choices 200 places 2026/27 1.33 per place 264 first choices 199 places
First preferences per place at Harris Academy Beckenham. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 264 first preferences for 199 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Academy Beckenham, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 220 149 115 0.68
2016/17 205 131 97 0.64
2017/18 199 197 123 0.99
2018/19 212 239 138 1.13
2019/20 215 206 127 0.96
2020/21 202 182 85 0.9
2021/22 200 194 104 0.97
2022/23 220 257 143 1.17
2023/24 216 302 154 1.4
2024/25 176 298 135 1.69
2025/26 200 331 151 1.66
2026/27 199 264 129 1.33

Places offered

199

in 2026/27

Named first choice

264

1,435 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

48.9%

129 of 264

Offers to families outside the council

9%

17 of 199 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

791

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

974

123.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

183

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

420

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 Harris Academy Beckenham 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 Harris Academy Beckenham 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Harris Academy Beckenham from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,320 places 732 on roll 2012/13 1,320 places 790 on roll 2013/14 1,320 places 866 on roll 2014/15 1,320 places 941 on roll 2015/16 1,320 places 988 on roll 2016/17 1,320 places 1,035 on roll 2017/18 1,320 places 1,071 on roll 2018/19 1,320 places 1,152 on roll 2020/21 1,320 places 1,144 on roll 2021/22 1,320 places 1,130 on roll 2022/23 1,320 places 1,155 on roll 2023/24 1,320 places 1,217 on roll 2024/25 1,211 places 1,255 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Harris Academy Beckenham has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code in one of them.

Adjudicator determinations naming Harris Academy Beckenham. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
2 September 2021 No fault found ADA3767, ADA3775, ADA3795, ADA3804, ADA3806-8, ADA3815-26, ADA3829-35, ADA3847-50, ADA3855-6, ADA3859-62, ADA3869
2 June 2020 Arrangements did not comply ADA3633-9, ADA3642-6, ADA3649, ADA3651-3, ADA3681 and ADA3683

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Bromley

Postcode BR3 3SJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137121).

Other contested secondary schools in Bromley

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.