School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Nower Hill High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 140 families who named Nower Hill High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 310 and 392 put it first.

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

1.26

first choices for every place available

392 first preferences for 310 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Nower Hill High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Nower Hill 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

Nower Hill High School 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 Nower Hill 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 1.4 per place 410 first choices 293 places 2016/17 1.35 per place 391 first choices 289 places 2017/18 1.27 per place 402 first choices 317 places 2018/19 1.24 per place 397 first choices 320 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 385 first choices 318 places 2020/21 1.26 per place 404 first choices 321 places 2021/22 1.17 per place 371 first choices 318 places 2022/23 1.14 per place 352 first choices 309 places 2023/24 1.44 per place 448 first choices 312 places 2024/25 1.41 per place 425 first choices 302 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 399 first choices 311 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 392 first choices 310 places
First preferences per place at Nower Hill High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 392 first preferences for 310 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Nower Hill 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
2015/16 293 410 254 1.4
2016/17 289 391 255 1.35
2017/18 317 402 262 1.27
2018/19 320 397 252 1.24
2019/20 318 385 248 1.21
2020/21 321 404 245 1.26
2021/22 318 371 244 1.17
2022/23 309 352 237 1.14
2023/24 312 448 273 1.44
2024/25 302 425 250 1.41
2025/26 311 399 254 1.28
2026/27 310 392 252 1.26

Places offered

310

in 2026/27

Named first choice

392

1,425 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

64.3%

252 of 392

Offers to families outside the council

2%

7 of 310 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

1,622

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,622

100% of capacity

Unfilled places

0

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 Nower Hill 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 Nower Hill High 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Nower Hill High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,050 2,100 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,950 places 1,886 on roll 2012/13 1,950 places 1,868 on roll 2013/14 1,950 places 1,866 on roll 2014/15 1,950 places 1,856 on roll 2015/16 1,950 places 1,880 on roll 2016/17 1,950 places 1,880 on roll 2017/18 1,995 places 1,900 on roll 2018/19 1,995 places 1,935 on roll 2020/21 1,995 places 1,991 on roll 2021/22 1,995 places 2,015 on roll 2022/23 1,995 places 2,030 on roll 2023/24 1,995 places 2,023 on roll 2024/25 2,022 places 2,022 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
Harrow

Postcode HA5 5RP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137028).

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.