School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Academy Rainham?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Harris Academy Rainham as their first choice did not get a place: 161 put it first and 154 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Havering actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 10 years of official figures.

7

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

161 first preferences for 184 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Academy Rainham

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Academy Rainham, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Havering 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 Havering, 7.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 30 of 404 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 Havering.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Havering 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

Harris Academy Rainham turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 10 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Harris Academy Rainham, 2017/18 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 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2017/18 0.9 per place 174 first choices 194 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 216 first choices 178 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 224 first choices 176 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 193 first choices 175 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 179 first choices 178 places 2022/23 0.98 per place 172 first choices 176 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 184 first choices 173 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 183 first choices 175 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 172 first choices 174 places 2026/27 0.88 per place 161 first choices 184 places
First preferences per place at Harris Academy Rainham. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 161 first preferences for 184 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Academy Rainham, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2017/18 194 174 171 0.9
2018/19 178 216 163 1.21
2019/20 176 224 161 1.27
2020/21 175 193 157 1.1
2021/22 178 179 161 1.01
2022/23 176 172 155 0.98
2023/24 173 184 154 1.06
2024/25 175 183 164 1.05
2025/26 174 172 163 0.99
2026/27 184 161 154 0.88

Places offered

184

in 2026/27

Named first choice

161

336 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.7%

154 of 161

Offers to families outside the council

9%

17 of 184 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

1,036

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

903

87.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

133

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 Harris Academy Rainham 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 Harris Academy Rainham reported 133 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.2% 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 Harris Academy Rainham from 2016/17 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 16/17 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2016/17 1,036 places 933 on roll 2017/18 1,036 places 936 on roll 2018/19 1,036 places 948 on roll 2020/21 1,036 places 913 on roll 2021/22 1,036 places 902 on roll 2022/23 1,036 places 899 on roll 2023/24 1,036 places 897 on roll 2024/25 1,036 places 903 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Havering

Postcode RM13 9XD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143428).

Other contested secondary schools in Havering

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.