School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Avanti House School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 212 families who named Avanti House School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 167 and 367 put it first.

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

2.20

first choices for every place available

367 first preferences for 167 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Avanti House School

There is no published appeal success rate for Avanti House 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 Harrow 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 Harrow, 4.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 9 of 191 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 Harrow.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Harrow 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

Avanti House School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 9 of those years. In the other 2 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 Avanti House School, 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 0.54 per place 97 first choices 178 places 2016/17 1 per place 177 first choices 177 places 2017/18 0.91 per place 162 first choices 178 places 2018/19 1.29 per place 228 first choices 177 places 2019/20 1.5 per place 262 first choices 175 places 2020/21 1.66 per place 293 first choices 176 places 2021/22 1.4 per place 243 first choices 174 places 2022/23 1.54 per place 272 first choices 177 places 2023/24 1.61 per place 282 first choices 175 places 2024/25 1.88 per place 321 first choices 171 places 2025/26 2.18 per place 369 first choices 169 places 2026/27 2.2 per place 367 first choices 167 places
First preferences per place at Avanti House School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 367 first preferences for 167 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Avanti House School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 97 97 0.54
2016/17 177 177 129 1
2017/18 178 162 129 0.91
2018/19 177 228 149 1.29
2019/20 175 262 145 1.5
2020/21 176 293 154 1.66
2021/22 174 243 154 1.4
2022/23 177 272 159 1.54
2023/24 175 282 155 1.61
2024/25 171 321 155 1.88
2025/26 169 369 151 2.18
2026/27 167 367 155 2.2

Places offered

167

in 2026/27

Named first choice

367

879 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

42.2%

155 of 367

Offers to families outside the council

20%

33 of 167 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

901

100.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

1

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

360

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 Avanti House 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 Avanti House School 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 Avanti House School from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,680 places 143 on roll 2013/14 1,680 places 299 on roll 2014/15 1,680 places 500 on roll 2015/16 1,680 places 722 on roll 2016/17 1,680 places 968 on roll 2017/18 1,260 places 797 on roll 2018/19 1,260 places 952 on roll 2020/21 1,260 places 1,143 on roll 2021/22 1,260 places 1,201 on roll 2022/23 1,260 places 1,231 on roll 2023/24 1,260 places 1,188 on roll 2024/25 1,260 places 1,183 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. Avanti House School has been the subject of 2 such determinations. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Avanti House School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
4 January 2022 No fault found ADA3890
2 November 2021 No fault found ADA3837

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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Harrow

Postcode HA7 2EQ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138227).

Other contested secondary schools in Harrow

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.