School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Academy Merton?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named Harris Academy Merton as their first choice did not get a place: 220 put it first and 191 of them were offered one.

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

29

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

220 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Academy Merton

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Academy Merton, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Merton 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 Merton, 18.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 25 of 135 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 Merton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Merton 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 Merton turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 2 of those years. In the other 9 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 Harris Academy Merton, 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 1.41 per place 249 first choices 177 places 2016/17 1.04 per place 216 first choices 208 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 224 first choices 239 places 2018/19 0.87 per place 203 first choices 233 places 2019/20 0.87 per place 203 first choices 233 places 2020/21 0.78 per place 186 first choices 237 places 2021/22 0.83 per place 195 first choices 236 places 2022/23 0.82 per place 194 first choices 236 places 2023/24 0.83 per place 197 first choices 236 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 216 first choices 239 places 2025/26 0.85 per place 203 first choices 239 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 220 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at Harris Academy Merton. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 220 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Academy Merton, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 177 249 140 1.41
2016/17 208 216 159 1.04
2017/18 239 224 181 0.94
2018/19 233 203 155 0.87
2019/20 233 203 170 0.87
2020/21 237 186 158 0.78
2021/22 236 195 159 0.83
2022/23 236 194 174 0.82
2023/24 236 197 171 0.83
2024/25 239 216 185 0.9
2025/26 239 203 188 0.85
2026/27 236 220 191 0.93

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

220

600 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.8%

191 of 220

Offers to families outside the council

52%

122 of 236 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

1,490

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,129

75.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

361

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

200

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 Merton 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 Merton reported 361 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 75.8% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Harris Academy Merton from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,200 places 880 on roll 2010/11 1,200 places 981 on roll 2011/12 1,200 places 1,038 on roll 2012/13 1,064 places 1,055 on roll 2013/14 1,064 places 1,102 on roll 2014/15 1,064 places 1,150 on roll 2015/16 1,064 places 1,106 on roll 2016/17 1,064 places 1,113 on roll 2017/18 1,400 places 1,151 on roll 2018/19 1,400 places 1,231 on roll 2020/21 1,400 places 1,350 on roll 2021/22 1,400 places 1,391 on roll 2022/23 1,400 places 1,365 on roll 2023/24 1,400 places 1,347 on roll 2024/25 1,690 places 1,348 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
Merton

Postcode CR4 1BP. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 131897).

Other contested secondary schools in Merton

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.