School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Academy Greenwich?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 81 families who named Harris Academy Greenwich as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 170 and 195 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

195 first preferences for 170 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Academy Greenwich

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Academy Greenwich, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Greenwich 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 Greenwich, 6.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 39 of 617 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 Greenwich.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Greenwich 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 Greenwich turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Harris Academy Greenwich, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.52 per place 272 first choices 179 places 2016/17 1.77 per place 313 first choices 177 places 2017/18 1.77 per place 316 first choices 179 places 2018/19 1.69 per place 301 first choices 178 places 2019/20 2.16 per place 370 first choices 171 places 2020/21 1.87 per place 332 first choices 178 places 2021/22 2.07 per place 367 first choices 177 places 2022/23 2.12 per place 373 first choices 176 places 2023/24 1.92 per place 334 first choices 174 places 2024/25 1.51 per place 260 first choices 172 places 2025/26 1.37 per place 239 first choices 175 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 195 first choices 170 places
First preferences per place at Harris Academy Greenwich. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 195 first preferences for 170 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Academy Greenwich, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 179 272 131 1.52
2016/17 177 313 132 1.77
2017/18 179 316 134 1.77
2018/19 178 301 137 1.69
2019/20 171 370 147 2.16
2020/21 178 332 143 1.87
2021/22 177 367 144 2.07
2022/23 176 373 155 2.12
2023/24 174 334 135 1.92
2024/25 172 260 118 1.51
2025/26 175 239 128 1.37
2026/27 170 195 114 1.15

Places offered

170

in 2026/27

Named first choice

195

1,199 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

58.5%

114 of 195

Offers to families outside the council

18%

31 of 170 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

910

101.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

250

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 Greenwich 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 Greenwich 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Harris Academy Greenwich from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,200 places 791 on roll 2013/14 1,150 places 908 on roll 2014/15 1,150 places 984 on roll 2015/16 1,150 places 1,036 on roll 2016/17 1,150 places 1,061 on roll 2017/18 1,150 places 1,104 on roll 2018/19 1,150 places 1,139 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 1,181 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 1,164 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,166 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,164 on roll 2024/25 1,150 places 1,154 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 Greenwich has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Harris Academy Greenwich. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
26 June 2017 Arrangements did not comply ADA3266

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
Greenwich

Postcode SE9 5EQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138449).

Other contested secondary schools in Greenwich

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.