School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hardenhuish School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 39 families who named Hardenhuish School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 236 and 272 put it first.

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

1.15

first choices for every place available

272 first preferences for 236 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hardenhuish School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hardenhuish 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 Wiltshire 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 Wiltshire, 24.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 55 of 228 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 Wiltshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Wiltshire 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

Hardenhuish School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Hardenhuish 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 0.96 per place 239 first choices 248 places 2016/17 0.97 per place 230 first choices 238 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 260 first choices 243 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 266 first choices 244 places 2019/20 1.01 per place 242 first choices 240 places 2020/21 1.3 per place 334 first choices 257 places 2021/22 1.15 per place 278 first choices 242 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 250 first choices 239 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 288 first choices 235 places 2024/25 1.35 per place 323 first choices 239 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 288 first choices 247 places 2026/27 1.15 per place 272 first choices 236 places
First preferences per place at Hardenhuish School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 272 first preferences for 236 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hardenhuish School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 248 239 226 0.96
2016/17 238 230 226 0.97
2017/18 243 260 243 1.07
2018/19 244 266 244 1.09
2019/20 240 242 236 1.01
2020/21 257 334 255 1.3
2021/22 242 278 239 1.15
2022/23 239 250 239 1.05
2023/24 235 288 233 1.23
2024/25 239 323 239 1.35
2025/26 247 288 246 1.17
2026/27 236 272 233 1.15

Places offered

236

in 2026/27

Named first choice

272

505 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

85.7%

233 of 272

Offers to families outside the council

3%

7 of 236 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

1,196

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,233

103.1% of capacity

Over its capacity by

37

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

333

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 Hardenhuish 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 Hardenhuish 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 Hardenhuish School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,687 places 1,642 on roll 2011/12 1,678 places 1,627 on roll 2012/13 1,678 places 1,595 on roll 2013/14 1,529 places 1,571 on roll 2014/15 1,529 places 1,533 on roll 2015/16 1,529 places 1,493 on roll 2016/17 1,529 places 1,480 on roll 2017/18 1,529 places 1,465 on roll 2018/19 1,529 places 1,491 on roll 2020/21 1,529 places 1,564 on roll 2021/22 1,529 places 1,548 on roll 2022/23 1,529 places 1,528 on roll 2023/24 1,529 places 1,537 on roll 2024/25 1,529 places 1,556 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Wiltshire

Postcode SN14 6RJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136296).

Other contested secondary schools in Wiltshire

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.