School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hartismere School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named Hartismere School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 151 and 159 put it first.

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

1.05

first choices for every place available

159 first preferences for 151 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hartismere School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hartismere School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Suffolk 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 Suffolk, 26.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 112 of 426 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 Suffolk.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Suffolk 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

Hartismere School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Hartismere School, 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 1.04 per place 166 first choices 160 places 2016/17 1.02 per place 178 first choices 175 places 2017/18 0.99 per place 154 first choices 155 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 178 first choices 164 places 2019/20 1.05 per place 177 first choices 168 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 180 first choices 173 places 2021/22 1.05 per place 192 first choices 183 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 200 first choices 186 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 216 first choices 204 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 194 first choices 181 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 183 first choices 176 places 2026/27 1.05 per place 159 first choices 151 places
First preferences per place at Hartismere School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 159 first preferences for 151 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hartismere School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 160 166 160 1.04
2016/17 175 178 173 1.02
2017/18 155 154 154 0.99
2018/19 164 178 164 1.09
2019/20 168 177 167 1.05
2020/21 173 180 172 1.04
2021/22 183 192 182 1.05
2022/23 186 200 186 1.08
2023/24 204 216 204 1.06
2024/25 181 194 181 1.07
2025/26 176 183 176 1.04
2026/27 151 159 150 1.05

Places offered

151

in 2026/27

Named first choice

159

204 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

94.3%

150 of 159

Offers to families outside the council

21%

31 of 151 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

874

102.8% of capacity

Over its capacity by

24

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

157

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 Hartismere School 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 Hartismere School 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hartismere School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 990 places 912 on roll 2011/12 882 places 903 on roll 2012/13 950 places 911 on roll 2013/14 945 places 921 on roll 2014/15 933 places 922 on roll 2015/16 970 places 940 on roll 2016/17 970 places 980 on roll 2017/18 1,000 places 964 on roll 2018/19 1,000 places 952 on roll 2020/21 944 places 1,029 on roll 2021/22 944 places 1,033 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 1,044 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 1,049 on roll 2024/25 1,007 places 1,045 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. Hartismere School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Hartismere School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
19 November 2015 Arrangements did not comply ADA2995

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
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Suffolk

Postcode IP23 7BL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136271).

Other contested secondary schools in Suffolk

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.