The School Record

Find a school, and see how many families wanted it

How many families applied, how many places were offered, and what Ofsted found. Every figure taken from the source, never interpreted.

Know the school already? Search by name. We use the middle of the postcode to work out distances, and we do not store what you type.

Most sought-after

The schools most families put first, for each place they gave out. This is demand, not quality.

SchoolFirsts per place

  1. 1 Eden Girls' Leadership Academy, Birmingham Birmingham 432 named it first · 123 offers 3.51
  2. 2 Dartford Grammar School Dartford, Kent 569 named it first · 179 offers 3.18
  3. 3 Ark Greenwich Free School Greenwich, London 357 named it first · 115 offers 3.10
  4. 4 Eden Boys' Leadership Academy, Birmingham East Birmingham 362 named it first · 122 offers 2.97
  5. 5 Landau Forte College Derby 517 named it first · 180 offers 2.87

A school at 3.00 was named first by three families for every place it gave out. That is how many people wanted it, and not whether a particular child would be offered one. Schools giving out fewer than 30 places are left out, because a handful of applications moves their figure too far.

The full table for England

How much choice a place has

Distance to the third nearest secondary school. Three is the number of preferences a family gets to express. Pick a council to see its schools.

Map of England by council, shaded by how far a typical address is from its third nearest secondary school, from under 1.8 km in the cities to over 4.4 km in the most rural councils.

2.4 kmTypical address

8.6 kmOne address in ten

15.3 kmNorthumberland

Median over 250 postcodes sampled in each council, measured in a straight line from the postcode centroid. It describes a neighbourhood rather than an address, and says nothing about whether a child would be offered a place at any of those schools.

Browse by council

Councils decide school places, so the council is the thing to pick first. The ten largest, of 151.

All 151 councils · pick an area on the map

The national pictureDemand for school places

Totals for the 11,575 schools with a figure in every intake from 2014 to 2026, so the lines show demand changing, not coverage. Totals across every school are on the 2026 intake page.

The same children, ten years apart: primary demand has been falling since 2016, secondary since 2019

A smaller cohort reaches Reception first and Year 7 seven years later, so the two lines fall in turn rather than together.

Reception from 390,383 in 2014 to 332,924 in 2026; Year 7 from 369,106 in 2014 to 398,022 in 2026320,000360,000400,000440,0002014201620182020202220242026Year 7398,022Reception332,924Peak: 400,235
Source: Department for Education, school-level applications and offers. First preferences at the 9,537 primary and 2,038 secondary admission routes with a figure in all 13 intakes. The vertical axis does not start at zero.

For every school we show how many families asked for a place, and whether they put the school first, second or third. We show how many places were given out, how that has changed over the 2014-2026 intakes, and the school's last Ofsted inspection. Next to every figure we say where it came from.

Nothing here says whether a child will get a place. High demand for a school does not mean it is full, and past figures do not forecast next year.

BrowseBrowse by council

151 councils. Pick one to see its schools, then filter for primary or secondary.