How hard is it to get into Park Grove Primary Academy?

In the 2026 intake Park Grove Primary Academy received 33 first preferences and made 35 offers. That is 0.94 first preferences for every place. It describes demand. It does not indicate whether any particular child would be offered a place.

Does Park Grove Primary Academy have a catchment area?

York publishes an admission zone for Park Grove Primary Academy.

Park Grove Primary Academy

Primary school · York

Park Grove, York, YO31 8LG

This school became an academy on 1 April 2017. Before that it was a community school, under Park Grove Primary School (URN 121280).

First preferences per place, 2026 0.94
How many families named it first, for each place it gave out. Higher than 37% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.
Offers made, 2026 35
Places given out on offer day. Not the number of places the school had, which is not published per year group.
Latest Ofsted Expected standard
Ofsted report card (current framework), November 2025. 2 inspections held.

About the school

Type of school: Academy
Academy trust: Ebor Academy Trust
Became an academy: 1 April 2017. Before that it was a community school, under Park Grove Primary School (URN 121280).
Ages: 5 to 11
Boys or girls: Boys and girls
Website: https://parkgrove.ebor.academy
Telephone: 01904 806500
School number (URN): 144266

Other schools run by Ebor Academy Trust

Ebor Academy Trust runs 22 other schools with a page here. These are the 10 nearest.

Haxby Road Primary Academy, York (0.3 miles away)
Osbaldwick Primary Academy, York (1.5 miles away)
Lakeside Primary Academy, York (1.7 miles away)
Hob Moor Community Primary Academy, York (2.2 miles away)
Robert Wilkinson Primary Academy, York (5.0 miles away)
Tockwith Church of England Primary Academy, York (8.7 miles away)
Tadcaster Primary Academy, Tadcaster (9.1 miles away)
Staynor Hall Primary Academy, Selby (13.6 miles away)
Camblesforth Community Primary Academy, Selby (16.9 miles away)
Brotherton and Byram Community Primary Academy, Knottingley (18.6 miles away)

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 Schools update their own entries, so these can be out of date.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 270 places and 262 children on roll.

8 places were unfilled, which is 3% of the school.

In 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 the school had 267 children on roll on average, against 262 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 Park Grove Primary Academy

Source: Department for Education school census, January 2026.

Year group	Children
Reception	32
Year 1	36
Year 2	37
Year 3	38
Year 4	40
Year 5	42
Year 6	37

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. Councils handle applications made during the school year, including for schools that set their own admission rules. They hold the up-to-date position, which this page does not.

Who decides who gets a place

This school sets its own admission rules, through its academy trust, rather than York setting them.

Look on the school's own website for its admission arrangements. An admission authority has to agree its rules every year and publish them. The council still takes the application.

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: https://parkgrove.ebor.academy. Telephone: 01904 806500.

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, 33 families named Park Grove Primary Academy as their first preference, and the school made 35 offers.

That is 0.94 first preferences per place offered, higher than 37% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.

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

Fewer first preferences per place. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 1.06 in 2022–2023 and 0.95 in 2025–2026.

First preferences for this school fell 19%, from 38 a year in 2022–2023 to 31 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.

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

About the same number of families as its recent average put this school first.

In 2026, 33 families put this school first. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 36 a year.

In 2026, 75 families named this school somewhere on their list. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 79 a year.

In 2026, every family who put this school first was offered a place here (33 of 33). In 2021 to 2025 it was 98 in every 100.

In 2026, 1 of the 35 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 Park Grove Primary Academy 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.

Figures before 2017 are from Park Grove Primary School, the school this one replaced, before it became an academy. The government's school register links the two, and they are the same school.

Applications and offers at Reception, 13 intake years
Intake	1st preferences1st choice	All preferencesAny choice	Offers madeOffers	1st prefs per placePer place
2026	33	75	35	0.94
2025	29	74	30	0.97
2024	34	78	34	1.00
2023	45	85	40	1.12
2022	32	75	32	1.00
2021	42	82	42	1.00
2020	41	87	40	1.02
2019	35	82	37	0.95
2018	40	92	40	1.00
2017	34	90	40	0.85
2016 as Park Grove Primary School	43	80	45	0.96
2015 as Park Grove Primary School	32	80	37	0.86
2014 as Park Grove Primary School	49	104	40	1.23

“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 35 offers: 33 to families who had named it first and 2 to families who named it second.

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.

Each inspection this school holds, on a date axis. A heavier mark is an inspection that imposed a category of concern.

Ofsted report card (current framework), 18 November 2025

Safeguarding: Met
Inclusion: Expected standard
Curriculum and teaching: Expected standard
Achievement: Needs attention
Attendance and behaviour: Expected standard
Personal development and wellbeing: Expected standard
Early years: Expected standard
Leadership and governance: Expected standard

The current framework does not award an overall grade.

Ofsted's report for this school

Ofsted ungraded inspection, 1 October 2021

School remains 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, 13 of the 262 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 38 were on SEN support, which is help arranged by the school without a plan. That is 14 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, 43 of the 262 children here were known to be eligible for free school meals. That is 16 in every 100.

Fewer 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 27 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 63% in 2022 to 73% in 2023, a difference of 10 points.

Year 6 had 37 children, so one child is worth about 2.7 percentage points and that difference is about 4 children.

Half of schools in England move by 13 points or more across the same three years, so movement on this scale is ordinary rather than a sign of anything.

A percentage of a group this small says more about which children happened to be in it than about the teaching.

Key stage 2 (end of primary)
Year	Expected standard in reading, writing & maths	Higher standard	Average reading score	Average maths score
2024/25	65.0%	8.0%	108.0	104.0
2023/24	73.0%	12.0%	106.0	107.0
2022/23	63.0%	12.0%	105.0	103.0

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	12.8	10.3	0.6	2.0	20.3%
2023/24	12.7	10.6	0.0	2.1	16.5%
2022/23	13.5	13.0	0.5	0.0	3.7%
2021/22	13.8	12.2	1.0	0.6	11.6%
2020/21	13.0	12.1	0.9	0.0	6.9%
2019/20	12.8	10.0	0.0	2.8	21.9%

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 (Park Grove Primary), in force from 2025.

Covers: 185 live postcodes across 1.083 km².

68 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.