Highest number of young people offered a place at first preference secondary school

Families applying for their child’s secondary school place have been finding out which school their child has been allocated for September 2019.

The number of children offered their first preference school is the highest it has been in Leeds for many years at 7,486 children, with 8,711 children attending one of their preferred schools.

Leeds City Council have made 9,141 year seven offers this year, an overall increase of an additional 8 classes from 2018.

The number of children not offered a place at one of their five preferred secondary schools has reduced from last year.

Families are recommended to always include the school where they receive catchment or nearest priority as one of their preferences and to make sure they use all five preferences to get the best chance of being offered a preferred school. This year 90% of the families who were not offered a school place they requested, did not include a preference for their catchment or nearest school.

Councillor Jonathan Pryor, Leeds City Council’s executive member for Learning, Skills and Employment said:

“Education is an incredibly important part of our ambition for Leeds to be the best city to live and grow up in. I am pleased that we have been able to increase the number of young people attending their first preference school, although this is getting more and more challenging to achieve as pupil numbers rise.

“Over the last ten years the increase we’ve seen in primary school numbers is now starting to making itself felt in the secondary school places. Which is why we are considering bringing forward options for increasing the amount of secondary provision in some areas of the city”.

Parents need to accept their offer of a school place as soon as possible. They can also request to be added to the waiting lists at schools where they have not been offered a place and should do this by the 15 March 2019 to be included in the first allocation of places from the waiting lists.

Notes:

7486 children were given their 1^st preference (82%) (7290 or 82% last year)

796 children were given their 2^nd preference (8.7%) (710 or 8% last year)

284 children were given their 3^rd preference (3%) (241 or 2.4% last year)

90 children were given their 4^th preference (100 last year)

55 children were given their 5^th preference (66 last year)

ENDS

For media enquiries, please contact:

Leeds City Council press office, on (0113) 37 86007

Email: communicationsteam@leeds.gov.uk