School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Invictus Academy Croydon?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 19 families who named Harris Invictus Academy Croydon as their first choice did not get a place: 171 put it first and 152 of them were offered one.

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

19

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

171 first preferences for 178 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Invictus Academy Croydon

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Invictus Academy Croydon, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Croydon 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 Croydon, 8.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 13 of 160 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 Croydon.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Croydon 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 Invictus Academy Croydon turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 5 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 Invictus Academy Croydon, 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 0.87 per place 126 first choices 145 places 2016/17 1.05 per place 123 first choices 117 places 2017/18 1.16 per place 208 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.52 per place 267 first choices 176 places 2019/20 1.24 per place 221 first choices 178 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 174 first choices 184 places 2021/22 0.93 per place 167 first choices 180 places 2022/23 0.65 per place 122 first choices 188 places 2023/24 0.83 per place 160 first choices 192 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 171 first choices 191 places 2025/26 0.59 per place 105 first choices 179 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 171 first choices 178 places
First preferences per place at Harris Invictus Academy Croydon. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 171 first preferences for 178 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Invictus Academy Croydon, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 145 126 84 0.87
2016/17 117 123 77 1.05
2017/18 179 208 121 1.16
2018/19 176 267 116 1.52
2019/20 178 221 122 1.24
2020/21 184 174 125 0.95
2021/22 180 167 127 0.93
2022/23 188 122 122 0.65
2023/24 192 160 150 0.83
2024/25 191 171 153 0.9
2025/26 179 105 105 0.59
2026/27 178 171 152 0.96

Places offered

178

in 2026/27

Named first choice

171

505 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88.9%

152 of 171

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 178 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

803

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

825

102.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

22

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

280

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 Invictus Academy Croydon 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 Invictus Academy Croydon 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Harris Invictus Academy Croydon from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,180 places 175 on roll 2015/16 1,180 places 344 on roll 2016/17 1,180 places 466 on roll 2017/18 1,180 places 662 on roll 2018/19 1,180 places 834 on roll 2020/21 1,180 places 900 on roll 2021/22 1,180 places 907 on roll 2022/23 1,180 places 978 on roll 2023/24 1,180 places 1,009 on roll 2024/25 1,083 places 976 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Croydon

Postcode CR0 2TB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140952).

Other contested secondary schools in Croydon

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.