School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Academy Morden?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Harris Academy Morden as their first choice did not get a place: 114 put it first and 113 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.

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

114 first preferences for 184 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Academy Morden

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Academy Morden, 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 Morden turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 12 years. It has never had more first choices than places, and refused families who named it first anyway — 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 Morden, 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 0.48 per place 85 first choices 176 places 2016/17 0.64 per place 114 first choices 178 places 2017/18 0.49 per place 86 first choices 175 places 2018/19 0.72 per place 129 first choices 180 places 2019/20 0.86 per place 154 first choices 179 places 2020/21 0.8 per place 142 first choices 178 places 2021/22 0.77 per place 153 first choices 199 places 2022/23 0.86 per place 163 first choices 189 places 2023/24 0.64 per place 115 first choices 180 places 2024/25 0.6 per place 112 first choices 187 places 2025/26 0.72 per place 133 first choices 184 places 2026/27 0.62 per place 114 first choices 184 places
First preferences per place at Harris Academy Morden. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 114 first preferences for 184 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Academy Morden, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 176 85 85 0.48
2016/17 178 114 114 0.64
2017/18 175 86 86 0.49
2018/19 180 129 105 0.72
2019/20 179 154 111 0.86
2020/21 178 142 112 0.8
2021/22 199 153 134 0.77
2022/23 189 163 136 0.86
2023/24 180 115 105 0.64
2024/25 187 112 108 0.6
2025/26 184 133 117 0.72
2026/27 184 114 113 0.62

Places offered

184

in 2026/27

Named first choice

114

523 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.1%

113 of 114

Offers to families outside the council

39%

71 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

1,495

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

877

58.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

618

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 Morden 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 Morden reported 618 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 58.7% 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Harris Academy Morden from 2012/13 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2012/13 1,100 places 591 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 575 on roll 2014/15 1,100 places 550 on roll 2015/16 1,100 places 610 on roll 2016/17 1,100 places 689 on roll 2017/18 1,100 places 750 on roll 2018/19 900 places 810 on roll 2020/21 900 places 857 on roll 2021/22 900 places 863 on roll 2022/23 900 places 868 on roll 2023/24 900 places 871 on roll 2024/25 1,495 places 877 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 SM4 6DU. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 138495).

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.