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At the most sought-after English secondary schools, the last pupil offered a place lived just a few hundred metres away. Below are the schools with the smallest catchments in the country, drawn from official admissions records — followed by the schools with the most first-preference applications. All figures are each school's most recent admissions year.
Tightest catchment on record
Mulberry Stepney Green Mathematics and Computing College (Tower Hamlets)
0.06 miles — about 97 m (2024-25)
Distance the last-admitted pupil lived from the school (offered on distance criteria).
Ranked by first-preference applications in the latest admissions round.
What "distance" means. For schools that ran out of places and admitted on distance, this is how far from the school the last pupil offered a place lived. It is a record of one admissions round — not a guaranteed cut-off for next year, which shifts with demand, sibling links and where applicants live.
Source. Official local-authority and government admissions data, each school's most recent published round (2024-25 onward). Not every school admits on distance (many use faith, banding, aptitude or sibling criteria first), so this ranks only those that do.
School Atlas holds catchment and admissions data for thousands of schools and covers every open school across all four UK nations — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Click any school above for its full catchment history, inspection record, results and admissions criteria.