School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Academy Sutton?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 142 families who named Harris Academy Sutton as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 195 and 307 put it first.

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

1.57

first choices for every place available

307 first preferences for 195 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Academy Sutton

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Academy Sutton, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Sutton 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 Sutton, 7.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 42 of 534 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 Sutton.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Sutton 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 Sutton turned first-choice families away in every one of the 8 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Harris Academy Sutton, 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 1.04 per place 255 first choices 246 places 2020/21 1.45 per place 317 first choices 218 places 2021/22 1.25 per place 267 first choices 214 places 2022/23 1.34 per place 273 first choices 204 places 2023/24 1.47 per place 285 first choices 194 places 2024/25 1.55 per place 318 first choices 205 places 2025/26 1.79 per place 351 first choices 196 places 2026/27 1.57 per place 307 first choices 195 places
First preferences per place at Harris Academy Sutton. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 307 first preferences for 195 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Academy Sutton, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2019/20 246 255 169 1.04
2020/21 218 317 177 1.45
2021/22 214 267 168 1.25
2022/23 204 273 171 1.34
2023/24 194 285 157 1.47
2024/25 205 318 178 1.55
2025/26 196 351 168 1.79
2026/27 195 307 165 1.57

Places offered

195

in 2026/27

Named first choice

307

1,722 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

53.7%

165 of 307

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 195 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

975

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,053

108% of capacity

Over its capacity by

78

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

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 Sutton 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 Sutton 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 Sutton from 2018/19 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2018/19 975 places 195 on roll 2020/21 1,275 places 642 on roll 2021/22 1,275 places 854 on roll 2022/23 1,275 places 1,037 on roll 2023/24 1,275 places 1,170 on roll 2024/25 1,275 places 1,297 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Sutton

Postcode SM2 5RD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143706).

Other contested secondary schools in Sutton

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.