School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Academy Chafford Hundred?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 178 families who named Harris Academy Chafford Hundred as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 207 and 374 put it first.

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

1.81

first choices for every place available

374 first preferences for 207 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Academy Chafford Hundred

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Academy Chafford Hundred, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Thurrock 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 Thurrock, 10.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 30 of 274 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 Thurrock.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Thurrock 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 Chafford Hundred turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 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 Chafford Hundred, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.85 per place 330 first choices 178 places 2016/17 2.06 per place 365 first choices 177 places 2017/18 2.03 per place 355 first choices 175 places 2018/19 2 per place 340 first choices 170 places 2019/20 1.65 per place 334 first choices 203 places 2020/21 1.97 per place 355 first choices 180 places 2021/22 2.05 per place 358 first choices 175 places 2022/23 2.33 per place 413 first choices 177 places 2023/24 2.24 per place 404 first choices 180 places 2024/25 1.88 per place 393 first choices 209 places 2025/26 2.31 per place 395 first choices 171 places 2026/27 1.81 per place 374 first choices 207 places
First preferences per place at Harris Academy Chafford Hundred. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 374 first preferences for 207 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Academy Chafford Hundred, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 178 330 173 1.85
2016/17 177 365 171 2.06
2017/18 175 355 160 2.03
2018/19 170 340 158 2
2019/20 203 334 173 1.65
2020/21 180 355 169 1.97
2021/22 175 358 164 2.05
2022/23 177 413 167 2.33
2023/24 180 404 167 2.24
2024/25 209 393 198 1.88
2025/26 171 395 155 2.31
2026/27 207 374 196 1.81

Places offered

207

in 2026/27

Named first choice

374

958 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

52.4%

196 of 374

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 207 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

990

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,001

101.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

11

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

400

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 Chafford Hundred 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 Chafford Hundred 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Harris Academy Chafford Hundred from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,100 places 974 on roll 2012/13 1,100 places 1,090 on roll 2013/14 1,100 places 1,131 on roll 2014/15 1,200 places 1,156 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 1,194 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 1,261 on roll 2017/18 1,330 places 1,282 on roll 2018/19 1,330 places 1,295 on roll 2020/21 1,360 places 1,412 on roll 2021/22 1,360 places 1,449 on roll 2022/23 1,360 places 1,482 on roll 2023/24 1,390 places 1,463 on roll 2024/25 1,390 places 1,377 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 Chafford Hundred has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Harris Academy Chafford Hundred. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
2 October 2014 Arrangements did not comply ADA2688

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
Thurrock

Postcode RM16 6SA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137549).

Other contested secondary schools in Thurrock

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.