School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Academy Wimbledon?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 34 families who named Harris Academy Wimbledon as their first choice did not get a place: 164 put it first and 130 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Merton actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 8 years of official figures.

34

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

164 first preferences for 190 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Academy Wimbledon

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Academy Wimbledon, 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 Wimbledon turned first-choice families away in every one of the 8 years published. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 4 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 Wimbledon, 2019/20 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 19/20 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2019/20 0.61 per place 113 first choices 185 places 2020/21 0.68 per place 135 first choices 199 places 2021/22 0.89 per place 169 first choices 189 places 2022/23 1.29 per place 232 first choices 180 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 205 first choices 180 places 2024/25 1.26 per place 226 first choices 180 places 2025/26 1.01 per place 186 first choices 184 places 2026/27 0.86 per place 164 first choices 190 places
First preferences per place at Harris Academy Wimbledon. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 164 first preferences for 190 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Academy Wimbledon, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 185 113 95 0.61
2020/21 199 135 96 0.68
2021/22 189 169 119 0.89
2022/23 180 232 143 1.29
2023/24 180 205 137 1.14
2024/25 180 226 127 1.26
2025/26 184 186 132 1.01
2026/27 190 164 130 0.86

Places offered

190

in 2026/27

Named first choice

164

938 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.3%

130 of 164

Offers to families outside the council

23%

43 of 190 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

850

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

894

105.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

44

reported as full or beyond

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 Harris Academy Wimbledon 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 Wimbledon 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, 2018/19 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Harris Academy Wimbledon from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 1,150 places 129 on roll 2020/21 1,150 places 494 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 675 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 845 on roll 2023/24 1,100 places 960 on roll 2024/25 1,100 places 1,041 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Harris Academy Wimbledon has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Harris Academy Wimbledon. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
8 September 2022 No fault found ADA3922

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

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
Merton

Postcode SW19 2JY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 145860).

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.