Shropshire top in West Midlands for secondary school placements
Shropshire Council continues to ride on the success for being one of the top councils for first preference and preferred school placements in the region.
Figures released this week for secondary and primary applications and offers statistics, from the Department for Education, put Shropshire top of the West Midlands table.
The secondary and primary school applications and offers statistics provide the number of applications and offers made for secondary and primary school entry in September 2022, and the proportion which received preferred offers.
Shropshire achieved 99.0% of offers for a preferred secondary school, with 93.7% securing their first preference. This compares, and is better than, the England averages of 95.8% and 83.3%, and the West Midlands averages of 95.6% and 81.5%, respectively.
Shropshire also took joint third place in the table for primary school placements, achieving 98.7% of offers for a preferred school, with 94.6% achieving first preference for their primary school.
Kirstie Hurst-Knight, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for children and education, said:-
“This is fantastic news. I am delighted that we have been ranked top of the table in terms of first preferences met for secondary schools compared with other councils in the region.
“Our primary school ranking also achieved an excellent result, coming equal third.
“Shropshire Council works hard to ensure that as many children as possible are able to attend their preferred school. The council’s long-term strategy, initiated in 2016, of securing the right number of school places, in the right locations and at the right time, has been highly successful and has contributed to these results.
“This is a tremendous achievement, and I would like to thank our schools admissions team and everyone else involved in helping make this happen.”
You can view the results on the Government’s website here: Secondary and primary school applications and offers, Academic Year 2022/23 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)
Further information
Secondary and primary applications and offers data is collected from councils. The offers were made, and data collected, based on the national offer days of 1 March 2022 (secondary) and 19 April 2022 (primary).
Figures are provided at national, regional, and council level. A time series is provided from 2014, when primary data was first collected following the inaugural primary national offer day.
The application and offer data is gathered at pupil level from which school level figures can be produced. A timeseries of this data has now been included in the ‘All supporting files’ within the ‘Explore data and files’ section of this publication. It shows the number of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and total preferences expressed, and the number of offers, also by 1st, 2nd, 3rd and total preferences, as well as a range of contextual data.
