How hard is it to get into Clifton Green Primary School?

In the 2026 intake Clifton Green Primary School received 27 first preferences and made 30 offers. That is 0.90 first preferences for every place. It describes demand. It does not indicate whether any particular child would be offered a place.

Does Clifton Green Primary School have a catchment area?

York publishes an admission zone for Clifton Green Primary School.

Clifton Green Primary School

Primary school · York

Kingsway North, York, YO30 6JA

This school was given a new school number. Before that it was Shipton Street Infant School (URN 121284).

First preferences per place, 2026 0.90
How many families named it first, for each place it gave out. Higher than 22% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.
Offers made, 2026 30
Places given out on offer day. Not the number of places the school had, which is not published per year group.
Latest Ofsted Good
Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), May 2022.

About the school

Type of school: Community school, run by the council
New school number: Yes. Before that it was Shipton Street Infant School (URN 121284).
Ages: 3 to 11
Boys or girls: Boys and girls
Nursery classes: Yes
Website: http://www.cliftongreenprimary.co.uk
Telephone: 01904 936948
School number (URN): 121283

From Get Information about Schools, retrieved 2 September 2026. Schools update their own entries, so these can be out of date.

How big the school is

In 2024 this school had 420 places and 368 children on roll.

52 places were unfilled, which is 12% of the school.

In 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 the school had 379 children on roll on average, against 368 in 2024.

Its places have grown from 360 in 2009 to 420 in 2024.

Places are the whole school added up, every year group together. That is not the number of places a school offers to new children in one year.

Source: Department for Education school capacity collection.

Children in each year group

As counted on one day in January 2026, the most recent school census. These are children, not places.

Children in each year group at Clifton Green Primary School

Source: Department for Education school census, January 2026.

Year group	Children
Nursery 2	24
Reception	38
Year 1	47
Year 2	44
Year 3	60
Year 4	50
Year 5	57
Year 6	52

This is not a list of spare places. Places per year group are not published, and the count is from January. Children join and leave all year, so a year group that looked two under in January can be full by March.

If you are moving into the area and need a place during the school year, ask York, which handles admissions for this school. They hold the up-to-date position, which this page does not.

Who decides who gets a place

York sets the admission rules for this school, as it does for all its community and voluntary controlled schools.

Look for York's admission arrangements. An admission authority has to agree its rules every year and publish them.

Taken from the kind of school this is, as recorded by the Department for Education. We do not hold this school's rules themselves: a summary of an admission rule is not the rule, and only the admission authority's own published arrangements are binding.

How to apply

Applications for a place starting in September 2027 close on 15 January 2027, the date the School Admissions Code sets for every council in England.

Councils send every offer for primary school places on the same day, 16 April 2027 or the next working day.

You apply through the council where you live, even for a school in another area. You do not apply to the school. Find your council's primary school application on GOV.UK.

To ask about visiting the school, or anything else about it, contact the school. Website: http://www.cliftongreenprimary.co.uk. Telephone: 01904 936948.

Links and dates can change. Your council's own website has the final word. The dates are set nationally by the School Admissions Code 2021. GOV.UK link checked 23 September 2026. Contact details from Get Information about Schools.

How many families applied

Preferences expressed and offers made at Reception, as published by the Department for Education. These describe demand, not whether a particular child would be offered a place.

In the 2026 intake, 27 families named Clifton Green Primary School as their first preference, and the school made 30 offers.

That is 0.90 first preferences per place offered, higher than 22% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.

Position among schools in England admitting at Reception, 2026 intake.

Little change in first preferences per place. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 0.99 in 2022–2023 and 0.95 in 2025–2026.

First preferences for this school fell 38%, from 46 a year in 2022–2023 to 29 in 2025–2026. Across all 48 schools in York admitting at Reception, first preferences changed little over the same years, from 1,669 to 1,570. The school also offered fewer places over these years, 47 a year in 2022–2023 and 30 in 2025–2026, which is why the figure per place can move the other way from the count of families.

Counts of families, not places.

Across York as a whole, 94.1% of families applying for a primary place for September 2026 were offered their first choice, and 99.0% were offered one of the three schools they named. That is a figure for the council, not for this school. How the 2026 round went in York.

Compared with its own past

Fewer families than its recent average put this school first.

In 2026, 27 families put this school first. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 45 a year.

In 2026, 63 families named this school somewhere on their list. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 69 a year.

In 2026, every family who put this school first was offered a place here (27 of 27). In 2021 to 2025 it was every family, every year.

In 2026, 1 of the 30 offers went to a child living outside York. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 0 a year.

Each figure is compared only with the same figure at this school. "About the same" means within 10 in every 100 of the average.

First preferences and offers at Reception

Families naming Clifton Green Primary School first, against the offers it made, for every intake year held.

Source: Department for Education, school-level applications and offers. Preferences count families. Offers count places given out on offer day. The vertical axis does not start at zero.

Applications and offers at Reception, 13 intake years
Intake	1st preferences1st choice	All preferencesAny choice	Offers madeOffers	1st prefs per placePer place
2026	27	63	30	0.90
2025	31	56	31	1.00
2024	47	74	47	1.00
2023	39	61	39	1.00
2022	54	78	55	0.98
2021	54	78	54	1.00
2020	48	73	50	0.96
2019	57	82	58	0.98
2018	52	90	54	0.96
2017	61	101	60	1.02
2016	40	80	40	1.00
2015	45	77	46	0.98
2014	46	74	53	0.87

“Offers made” is the number of offers on offer day, not the number of places the school has.

Source: Department for Education: school-level applications and offers, checked 14 September 2026. All sources.

Where families put this school on their list

In 2026 this school made 30 offers: 27 to families who had named it first and 1 to a family who named it second.

2 offers went to families who named it fourth or lower, or who were admitted another way.

A school is not allowed to treat a family differently because of where it sat on their list. The School Admissions Code says an admission authority must not give extra priority to children whose parents rank preferred schools in a particular order.

The order is used at the end, by the council, and not by the school. Where more than one school could take a child, the council offers the one the family put highest.

Leaving the other boxes empty does not change how this school considers an application. If none of the schools a family names can offer a place, the council has to offer one at a school that has room, and that school may be further away.

Source: Department for Education school level applications and offers, and the School Admissions Code 2021, paragraphs 1.9 and 2.11.

Ofsted

Ofsted changed its inspection framework: the current one publishes several graded areas and no single overall grade, while the previous one published an overall effectiveness grade. Each inspection below states which framework produced it.

Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), 17 May 2022

Overall effectiveness: Good
Quality of education: Good
Behaviour and attitudes: Good
Personal development: Outstanding
Leadership and management: Good
Early years: Good

Ofsted's report for this school

Source: Ofsted: state-funded school inspections management information, checked 14 September 2026. All sources.

If you are refused a place

In 2026, families in York lodged 17 appeals about a primary school place.

10 of them were heard by a panel and 4 succeeded, which is about 40 in every 100 heard.

The other 7 did not reach a panel. Most appeals that do not are withdrawn because a place comes up first.

Reception is an infant class, and the law caps an infant class at 30 children. A panel hearing an appeal about an infant class can only agree in three situations: the place was refused by mistake, the admission rules were not applied properly, or the decision was one no reasonable council would have made. It cannot simply decide that the child should have the place.

Of the 3 infant class appeals heard in York in 2026, 1 succeeded.

This is a record of decisions already made. A panel hears one case at a time and decides it on what that family sets out, so these figures do not indicate what would happen in any particular appeal.

These count appeals about every school in York, not this school. Nobody publishes appeal figures school by school.

Source: Department for Education, admission appeals in England, reporting year 2026.

Waiting lists

Being refused a place does not end the application. Every admission authority has to keep a waiting list until at least 31 December of the school year the child would have started, and some keep them for longer.

A waiting list is not a queue. The rules say a child cannot be given priority for having joined it earlier, or for having applied earlier. The list is put back in order against the school's own admission rules every time a child is added, so a place can move further away as well as nearer.

Councils differ on whether a refused child goes onto the list automatically. The council that sent the refusal is the only place that can say which it does.

From the School Admissions Code 2021, paragraph 2.15.

Children with special educational needs

In January 2026, 20 of the 372 children here had an education, health and care plan. That is 5 in every 100. Across schools in England the middle figure is 4 in every 100.

A further 71 were on SEN support, which is help arranged by the school without a plan. That is 19 in every 100, against a middle figure of 15 in every 100 across England.

A school named in a child's education, health and care plan has to admit that child. That duty holds even when the school is full, and it sits outside the rules that decide who gets a place when there are more children than places. Which school is named is decided with the council while the plan is being written, not through the normal application.

Source: Department for Education, special educational needs in England, January 2026 census.

Who goes to this school

In January 2026, 114 of the 372 children here were known to be eligible for free school meals. That is 31 in every 100.

More children are eligible here than at half of primary schools in England, where the middle figure is 20 in every 100.

English was not the first language for 23 in every 100 children here. Across primary schools the middle figure is 10 in every 100.

This describes the children who go to this school. It is not a measure of the school. Most children go to a school near home, so it is mostly a fact about the streets around it.

This matters when reading results. Across the 15,153 schools we hold 2024 key stage 2 results for, the fifth with the fewest eligible children averaged 70% reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. The fifth with the most averaged 48%.

Those are averages of many schools all over the country. This school's own results are further down this page exactly as published.

Source: Department for Education school census, January 2026. Free school meal eligibility is counted for every pupil on roll.

Exam results

Published by the Department for Education for the whole year group. Figures for smaller cohorts are withheld by DfE to protect pupil privacy and appear here as a dash, not a zero.

Key stage 2: what these numbers are made of

Reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths.

Across the 3 years published, this measure ran from 31% in 2022 to 51% in 2024, a difference of 20 points.

Year 6 had 52 children, so one child is worth about 1.9 percentage points and that difference is about 11 children.

Half of schools in England move by 13 points or more across the same three years.

Key stage 2 (end of primary)
Year	Expected standard in reading, writing & maths	Higher standard	Average reading score	Average maths score
2024/25	51.0%	4.0%	103.0	103.0
2023/24	33.0%	2.0%	101.0	98.0
2022/23	31.0%	0.0%	98.0	98.0

Teachers staying and leaving

These come from the School Workforce Census, which follows each teacher into the next year. The numbers count full-time jobs, so a teacher who works half the week counts as half. They are not a count of people.

The share of teachers who left, each year

Counted as full-time jobs rather than people, and counting a move to another state school as leaving this one.

Source: Department for Education, School Workforce Census. The year shown is the census year; leaving is measured by where the teacher was a year later. A small school's figure moves a long way on one or two people.

Census year	Teachers (FTE)	Still there a year later	Moved to another state school	Left state schools	Left in total
2024/25	19.5	17.5	1.0	1.0	10.3%
2023/24	19.4	19.4	0.0	0.0	0.0%
2022/23	23.0	19.0	2.0	2.0	17.4%
2021/22	19.4	18.4	0.0	1.0	5.2%
2020/21	20.2	18.2	0.0	2.0	9.9%
2019/20	23.2	18.6	2.0	2.6	19.8%

This is turnover among teachers. It says nothing about the headteacher or the senior leadership team: DfE publishes leadership retention separately and we do not hold it by school.

Catchment area

York publishes an admission zone for this school (Clifton Green Primary), in force from 2025.

Covers: 191 live postcodes across 1.634 km².

87 of the postcodes in this zone sit within 50 m of its edge. We place an address by its postcode centroid, not the address itself, so for those a specific house may fall the other side of the line.

How places were allocated

York publishes these figures on national offer day, the day families are told which school their child has been given. It is the only place that says how the school chose between the children who applied.