First Preference Secondary school offers for hundreds more Leeds children

Families applying for their child’s secondary school place have been finding out which school their child has been allocated for September 2018. Overall 8407 children will attend one of their top five preferred schools, an increase of 231 from 8176 last year.

Leeds City Council have made 8881 year seven offers this year, an overall increase of 426 (equivalent to an additional 14 classes) from 2017. Despite this significant increase, 7290 children will be attending their first preference school in September, which is an increase of 112 from last year and 432 from 2016.

Families are recommended to always include their nearest school 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 432 families did not include a preference for their nearest school or provide all 5 preferences available.

The number of children not getting a place at any of their five preferred secondary schools was 474, up from 279 last year. The council’s admissions team has made alternative offers for all of these young people, with over 250 of these offered their nearest school.

Councillor Lisa Mulherin, executive member for children and families said:

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

“The increase in primary school pupil numbers we have seen in the last ten years is now starting to making itself felt in the secondary phase which is why we are 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 17 March 2018 to be included in the first allocation of places from the waiting lists.

Notes:

8881 offers were made, an increase of 426 (4.8%) on 2017

7290 children were given their 1^st preference (82%) (7178 or 85% last year)

710 children were given their 2^nd preference (8%) (689 or 8% last year)

241 children were given their 3^rd preference (2.4%) (209 or 2.5% last year)

100 children were given their 4^th preference (75 last year)

66 children were given their 5^th preference (25 last year)

ENDS

For media enquiries, please contact:

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

Email: communicationsteam@leeds.gov.uk