School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Pinner High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 100 families who named Pinner High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 169 and 226 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Harrow actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

1.34

first choices for every place available

226 first preferences for 169 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Pinner High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Pinner 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

Pinner High School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 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 Pinner High School, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.35 per place 59 first choices 169 places 2017/18 0.51 per place 88 first choices 173 places 2018/19 0.75 per place 123 first choices 163 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 157 first choices 174 places 2020/21 1.23 per place 197 first choices 160 places 2021/22 1.25 per place 212 first choices 170 places 2022/23 1.41 per place 216 first choices 153 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 197 first choices 169 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 226 first choices 176 places 2025/26 1.22 per place 203 first choices 167 places 2026/27 1.34 per place 226 first choices 169 places
First preferences per place at Pinner High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 226 first preferences for 169 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Pinner 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
2016/17 169 59 59 0.35
2017/18 173 88 87 0.51
2018/19 163 123 100 0.75
2019/20 174 157 118 0.9
2020/21 160 197 118 1.23
2021/22 170 212 132 1.25
2022/23 153 216 127 1.41
2023/24 169 197 121 1.17
2024/25 176 226 133 1.28
2025/26 167 203 135 1.22
2026/27 169 226 126 1.34

Places offered

169

in 2026/27

Named first choice

226

1,246 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

55.8%

126 of 226

Offers to families outside the council

44%

74 of 169 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

897

99.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

across Years 7 to 11

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 Pinner 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 Pinner High School reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.7% 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, 2016/17 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Pinner High School from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,150 places 155 on roll 2017/18 1,150 places 303 on roll 2018/19 1,150 places 511 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 894 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 1,002 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,102 on roll 2023/24 1,150 places 1,132 on roll 2024/25 1,150 places 1,129 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Harrow

Postcode HA5 1NB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142864).

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.