School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Bentley Wood High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 52 families who named Bentley Wood High School as their first choice did not get a place: 216 put it first and 164 of them were offered one.

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

52

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

216 first preferences for 235 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Bentley Wood High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Bentley Wood 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 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

Bentley Wood 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 9 of those years. In the other 3 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 Bentley Wood 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 1.19 per place 247 first choices 207 places 2016/17 1.2 per place 250 first choices 208 places 2017/18 1.12 per place 234 first choices 209 places 2018/19 1.06 per place 238 first choices 224 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 267 first choices 220 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 253 first choices 222 places 2021/22 1.03 per place 227 first choices 221 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 243 first choices 234 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 223 first choices 240 places 2024/25 1 per place 232 first choices 233 places 2025/26 1.03 per place 243 first choices 236 places 2026/27 0.92 per place 216 first choices 235 places
First preferences per place at Bentley Wood High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 216 first preferences for 235 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Bentley Wood 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
2015/16 207 247 154 1.19
2016/17 208 250 151 1.2
2017/18 209 234 170 1.12
2018/19 224 238 166 1.06
2019/20 220 267 163 1.21
2020/21 222 253 159 1.14
2021/22 221 227 153 1.03
2022/23 234 243 181 1.04
2023/24 240 223 177 0.93
2024/25 233 232 153 1
2025/26 236 243 173 1.03
2026/27 235 216 164 0.92

Places offered

235

in 2026/27

Named first choice

216

635 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.9%

164 of 216

Offers to families outside the council

18%

42 of 235 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

1,224

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,162

94.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

62

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

240

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 Bentley Wood 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 Bentley Wood High School reported 62 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Bentley Wood High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,100 places 1,024 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 990 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 1,019 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 1,061 on roll 2015/16 1,280 places 1,091 on roll 2016/17 1,280 places 1,124 on roll 2017/18 1,280 places 1,168 on roll 2018/19 1,280 places 1,208 on roll 2020/21 1,280 places 1,292 on roll 2021/22 1,280 places 1,349 on roll 2022/23 1,304 places 1,389 on roll 2023/24 1,464 places 1,376 on roll 2024/25 1,464 places 1,389 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. Bentley Wood High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Bentley Wood High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
29 July 2019 No fault found ADA3576

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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Harrow

Postcode HA7 3JW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137178).

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.