School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Boys' Academy East Dulwich?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 28 families who named Harris Boys' Academy East Dulwich as their first choice did not get a place: 113 put it first and 85 of them were offered one.

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

28

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

113 first preferences for 150 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Boys' Academy East Dulwich

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Boys' Academy East Dulwich, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Southwark 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 Southwark, 15.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 85 of 547 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 Southwark.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Southwark 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 Boys' Academy East Dulwich turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Boys' Academy East Dulwich, 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 0.45 per place 66 first choices 146 places 2016/17 0.57 per place 77 first choices 135 places 2017/18 0.51 per place 70 first choices 136 places 2018/19 0.49 per place 72 first choices 147 places 2019/20 0.45 per place 66 first choices 147 places 2020/21 0.46 per place 68 first choices 147 places 2021/22 0.53 per place 79 first choices 150 places 2022/23 0.6 per place 90 first choices 149 places 2023/24 0.65 per place 97 first choices 150 places 2024/25 0.66 per place 99 first choices 150 places 2025/26 0.55 per place 82 first choices 150 places 2026/27 0.75 per place 113 first choices 150 places
First preferences per place at Harris Boys' Academy East Dulwich. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 113 first preferences for 150 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Boys' Academy East Dulwich, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 146 66 63 0.45
2016/17 135 77 72 0.57
2017/18 136 70 69 0.51
2018/19 147 72 61 0.49
2019/20 147 66 56 0.45
2020/21 147 68 63 0.46
2021/22 150 79 61 0.53
2022/23 149 90 78 0.6
2023/24 150 97 88 0.65
2024/25 150 99 94 0.66
2025/26 150 82 82 0.55
2026/27 150 113 85 0.75

Places offered

150

in 2026/27

Named first choice

113

540 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.2%

85 of 113

Offers to families outside the council

38%

57 of 150 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

746

99.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

4

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 Boys' Academy East Dulwich 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 Boys' Academy East Dulwich reported 4 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.5% 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 Boys' Academy East Dulwich from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 150 places 148 on roll 2010/11 950 places 297 on roll 2011/12 950 places 465 on roll 2012/13 950 places 592 on roll 2013/14 1,150 places 697 on roll 2014/15 950 places 745 on roll 2015/16 950 places 777 on roll 2016/17 950 places 769 on roll 2017/18 950 places 778 on roll 2018/19 950 places 818 on roll 2020/21 950 places 847 on roll 2021/22 950 places 864 on roll 2022/23 950 places 875 on roll 2023/24 950 places 880 on roll 2024/25 950 places 907 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
Southwark

Postcode SE22 0AT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 135816).

Other contested secondary schools in Southwark

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.