What's New

Council application and offer figures refreshed for 6 councils. For every state school in England, the Department for Education’s national tables now show how many families applied and how many places were offered on offer day, so a school’s competition for places reflects the latest round.

Salford school pages now show a catchment map for 14 schools — the first the borough has had. Salford's council-run primary schools do not use catchments at all: they rank by looked-after status, then siblings, then distance. But its faith schools admit by PARISH, and the council draws each parish boundary on a map. Those boundaries are stored in the council's files as real lines rather than pictures, so they have been read exactly rather than traced, and positioned using the Ordnance Survey grid printed on each map. Catholic and Church of England parishes cover the same streets as each other, so these areas overlap — that is how parishes work, not a mistake.

Devon school pages now show admission criteria for September 2027 entry at 65 more schools — every community and voluntary controlled school the county runs, 68 in all. Devon publishes each school's own policy only behind a staff login, but the criteria those schools share are set out in the county's co-ordinated admissions scheme, which its Cabinet determined in February 2026 and publishes openly on its committee site. Three of the seven rules turn on whether a child lives in the school's catchment area, and Devon's catchment maps are already on these pages. The scheme also confirms Devon has no community or voluntary controlled secondary schools at all.

Derbyshire school pages now show admission criteria and an admission number for September 2027 entry at 28 more schools, all of them run by Embark Federation. The federation sets one policy for every school it runs, so a single document determined in February 2026 gives each of them its ranked criteria and the number of places it expects to offer. Three of those rules turn on whether a child lives in the school's normal area, which is Derbyshire's own catchment definition — so for these schools, where you live is part of the order in which places are allocated.

Norfolk school pages now show admission criteria for September 2027 entry at 39 more schools, all of them academies run by the Diocese of Norwich Education and Academies Trust. The trust is the admission authority for its academies and sets one policy for all of them, so a single determined document — approved by its board in December 2025 — gives every one of those schools its ranked criteria and its admission number for the year. Two schools named in the policy have since closed and are not shown, and one academy has no church designation, so the faith criterion that applies at the others is correctly left off its list.

Luton school pages now show a catchment map for the first time — 51 of the town's 59 primary and secondary schools. Luton publishes no catchment maps; it offers a road-by-road checker instead. The full road list behind that checker has been matched to Ordnance Survey's road data and turned into areas, so you can see the shape rather than look your street up one at a time. Luton refers to many of its schools by a short name covering a pair — Challney means both Challney High Schools, Warden Hill means the infant and the junior — and in those cases the area is shown against both.

North East Lincolnshire school pages now show a catchment map for the first time — 57 of the area's 60 primary and secondary schools. The council publishes no maps at all: its catchment is a 2,913-row list of streets, and until now you had to read down it to find your road. Those streets have been matched to Ordnance Survey's own road data and turned into areas, so every point on the map belongs to the school whose listed street is nearest — the same answer the list gives, drawn. Where the council names two schools for one street, as it does for the Scartho and Waltham infant and junior pairs, both are shown.

Suffolk school pages now show a catchment map for the first time — 152 of the county's 299 primary and secondary schools. Suffolk draws each school's catchment by hand on an Ordnance Survey map and publishes it as a picture, so the areas could not simply be read across; each one had to be measured off the map. What makes that safe is the faint kilometre grid printed on every sheet: it fixes the scale and position exactly, and the areas came out accurate to about 14 metres. As a check, the 15 secondary catchments were measured separately and still fit together across the county without overlapping. Sheets that did not pass that check were left out rather than estimated.

North Yorkshire school pages now show a catchment map for 299 of the area's 331 primary and secondary schools, up by eleven. North Yorkshire's published map is unusual in naming each area only by school, with no reference number or address to confirm it by, and several names are cut short partway through a word. Rather than match on the name alone, each area was checked against the map itself: the areas tile the county without overlapping, and every school added sits inside the area carrying its name. Areas that failed that check were left out rather than guessed at.

Cheshire West and Chester school pages now show a catchment map for 121 of the area's 147 primary and secondary schools, up by four. Cheshire West and Cheshire East publish their catchments together, from a single shared map service, with one field marking which of the two councils each area belongs to — so reading it without that filter mixes the two authorities. The areas carry no reference number, so each was confirmed by checking that the school sits inside the area named after it and that neighbouring areas do not overlap.

Cheshire East school pages now show a catchment map for 126 of the area's 147 primary and secondary schools, up by three. Cheshire East shares a map service with Cheshire West and Chester, and the two councils' areas sit in the same layer, separated only by a marker field. Some areas are shared between schools and are labelled as such on the map; those are shown against every school named, not just the first. Each area added was confirmed by checking the school falls inside the area bearing its name.

Hampshire school pages now show a catchment map for 466 of the county's 491 primary and secondary schools, up by four: Danebury, Kings Furlong Infant, The Blue Coat School Basingstoke and King's Academy Brune Park. Hampshire's map service labels some areas with the name a school used before it changed — the area for The Ferns Primary Academy is still marked Fernhill Primary School, which closed some years ago. Because Hampshire has had schools with confusingly similar names, each area was matched on the school's reference number and then checked against the closed school's own record, never on the name alone.

Devon school pages now show a catchment map for 338 of the county's 351 primary and secondary schools, up by thirteen. Most of the additions are schools built in the last few years on the edges of Exeter and Plymouth — Sherford Vale, Matford Brook, Monkerton, Westclyst and Countess Wear among them. Devon had already drawn their designated areas on its published map; they had simply never been read across. Devon publishes the same areas from two separate map services, and the two agree on the size of each area to within about one per cent, so each was used to check the other before anything was added.

East Riding of Yorkshire school pages now show a catchment map for 134 of the area's 141 primary and secondary schools, up by ten. The maps were never missing — they were filed under the wrong schools. The council's boundary layer still lists several schools by the reference number they held before they amalgamated or became academies, so the areas for Hilderthorpe, Swinemoor, Croxby, Quay, Sigglesthorne and Willerby Carr Lane were each attached to a school that has since closed. Tracing every old reference to the school that replaced it recovered all ten.

Peterborough school pages now show a catchment map for 65 of the city's 77 primary and secondary schools, up by six: Great Haddon, Hampton Lakes, Thorpe, Southfields, Saint Michael and Dogsthorpe Infant. As in several other authorities, the cause was reference numbers rather than missing maps — the city's map layer lists many of its academies under the number of the school they replaced, so the catchment looked as though it belonged to a school that had closed. A handful of Peterborough schools still have no published catchment and are being followed up with the council.

Wiltshire school pages now show a catchment map for 213 of the county's 230 primary and secondary schools, up by six, including Wilton, Rowde, Ludwell and Marden Vale. Two further areas were deliberately left out. Wiltshire's published map file prints one school's name against another school's reference number in two places — Willowbrook against Oasis Academy Longmeadow, and Christ Church against Bradford on Avon Christchurch — and nothing else the council publishes settles which school each area belongs to. Showing a family the wrong catchment is worse than showing none, so both are on hold pending a check.

School pages now show thirteen full years of applications and offers, back to September 2014. Until now the early years looked patchy, but the data was never missing. When a school becomes an academy it is given a new reference number, and its earlier history stays filed under the old one — so a school that converted appeared to start life on the day it changed status. That earlier history has now been brought in and linked to the school it belongs to, which means thousands of schools gain years of earlier application, offer and first-preference figures.

Salford schools now show their admission criteria for September 2027 entry — 57 of the city's 93 schools. Salford publishes each school's full criteria on its own page but does not date any of them, so six entries that had previously been labelled as 2027 arrangements now carry a note saying the year is unconfirmed rather than asserting one. The rules themselves are the council's own text; it is only the year they apply to that the council does not state.

Manchester schools now show their admission criteria for September 2026 entry — 77 of the city's 169 schools — and 60 are already published for September 2027. One judgement worth explaining: the city's determined 2027-28 file is named as though it were a draft, but it sits on the council's own page of determined arrangements, and the page the council publishes a document on is a better guide to its status than the name of the file. Manchester publishes no catchment areas; its community schools rank children by distance from home.

Stockport schools now show their admission criteria for September 2027 entry — 56 of the borough's 99 schools — and 94 show their catchment area on the map. The council's determined arrangements cover the schools it admits to directly. The rest of the borough's schools are academies, each its own admission authority, and their arrangements sit on their own or their trust's website; those are being worked through school by school.