School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Harris Academy Riverside?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 18 families who named Harris Academy Riverside as their first choice did not get a place: 148 put it first and 130 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Thurrock actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 9 years of official figures.

18

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

148 first preferences for 180 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Harris Academy Riverside

There is no published appeal success rate for Harris Academy Riverside, 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 Riverside turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 9 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 Academy Riverside, 2018/19 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 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2018/19 0.73 per place 85 first choices 116 places 2019/20 0.54 per place 97 first choices 178 places 2020/21 0.95 per place 170 first choices 179 places 2021/22 0.84 per place 148 first choices 176 places 2022/23 0.86 per place 155 first choices 180 places 2023/24 0.76 per place 159 first choices 210 places 2024/25 0.96 per place 172 first choices 180 places 2025/26 0.83 per place 147 first choices 178 places 2026/27 0.82 per place 148 first choices 180 places
First preferences per place at Harris Academy Riverside. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 148 first preferences for 180 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Harris Academy Riverside, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2018/19 116 85 55 0.73
2019/20 178 97 94 0.54
2020/21 179 170 132 0.95
2021/22 176 148 130 0.84
2022/23 180 155 136 0.86
2023/24 210 159 139 0.76
2024/25 180 172 127 0.96
2025/26 178 147 121 0.83
2026/27 180 148 130 0.82

Places offered

180

in 2026/27

Named first choice

148

416 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

87.8%

130 of 148

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 180 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

898

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

965

107.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

67

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 Riverside 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 Riverside 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, 2017/18 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Harris Academy Riverside from 2017/18 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 17/18 18/19 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2017/18 900 places 126 on roll 2018/19 900 places 292 on roll 2020/21 900 places 757 on roll 2021/22 1,150 places 958 on roll 2022/23 1,150 places 1,007 on roll 2023/24 1,180 places 1,070 on roll 2024/25 1,148 places 1,107 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
Thurrock

Postcode RM19 1QY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 144750).

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.