School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Heartlands High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 26 families who named Heartlands High School as their first choice did not get a place: 166 put it first and 140 of them were offered one.

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

26

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

166 first preferences for 199 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Heartlands High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Heartlands High School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Haringey 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 Haringey, 4.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 12 of 250 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 Haringey.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Haringey 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

Heartlands High School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 11 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 Heartlands High School, 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 1.24 per place 246 first choices 199 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 191 first choices 204 places 2017/18 0.86 per place 196 first choices 227 places 2018/19 0.86 per place 202 first choices 234 places 2019/20 0.94 per place 216 first choices 231 places 2020/21 0.91 per place 207 first choices 228 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 201 first choices 222 places 2022/23 0.84 per place 190 first choices 226 places 2023/24 0.86 per place 195 first choices 228 places 2024/25 0.69 per place 160 first choices 233 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 192 first choices 198 places 2026/27 0.83 per place 166 first choices 199 places
First preferences per place at Heartlands High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 166 first preferences for 199 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Heartlands High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 199 246 130 1.24
2016/17 204 191 148 0.94
2017/18 227 196 138 0.86
2018/19 234 202 160 0.86
2019/20 231 216 159 0.94
2020/21 228 207 169 0.91
2021/22 222 201 152 0.91
2022/23 226 190 159 0.84
2023/24 228 195 150 0.86
2024/25 233 160 141 0.69
2025/26 198 192 154 0.97
2026/27 199 166 140 0.83

Places offered

199

in 2026/27

Named first choice

166

714 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

84.3%

140 of 166

Offers to families outside the council

6%

11 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,176

98% of capacity

Unfilled places

24

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Heartlands High School 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 Heartlands High School reported 24 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Heartlands High School 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 1,080 places 517 on roll 2013/14 1,080 places 744 on roll 2014/15 1,080 places 959 on roll 2015/16 1,080 places 1,017 on roll 2016/17 1,080 places 1,063 on roll 2017/18 1,080 places 1,113 on roll 2018/19 1,080 places 1,106 on roll 2020/21 1,080 places 1,154 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 1,173 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,177 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,166 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,176 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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Haringey

Postcode N22 7ST. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139616).

Other contested secondary schools in Haringey

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.