These statistics provide the number of applications and offers made for secondary and primary school entry in September 2023, and the proportion which received preferred offers.
The data is collected from local authorities. The offers were made, and data collected, based on the national offer days of 1 March 2023 (secondary) and 17 April 2023 (primary).
Figures are provided at national, regional and local authority 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 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.
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Data from the application and offer collections from 2014 to date, produced at school level and giving the number of preferences expressed for each school, by rank, and the number of offers, also by rank, as well as contextual data.
Secondary applications
620,000 applications were received for a place at secondary school in 2023. This is the highest number of applications recorded since the timeseries started in 2014.
Secondary results
The proportion of secondary applicants receiving an offer of their first choice school has decreased to 82.6% - down from 83.3% in 2022.
The comparative first preference rates for the last four years are provided in the chart below, which shows the drop in 2021 when the tests for the majority of selective schools were delayed until after the application deadline (so parents had to name the school without knowing if their child had achieved the test result enabling them to be considered for a place there), and subsequent recovery in 2022.
The proportion of applicants who received an offer of any of their preferred secondary schools was very slightly down at 95.6% (95.8% in 2022).
A timeseries of key results from 2014 are provided in the following table.
Secondary geographical variation
At local authority level the highest first preference rates were achieved in 2023 by:
Central Bedfordshire is the only local authority whose largest secondary entry point is year 9, which is what they therefore report on.
The local authorities with the lowest first preference rates were:
In London, the higher number of practical school choices available to applicants and the ability to name six schools may encourage parents and carers to make more speculative choices for their top preferences.
As expected, there is much less variation in the proportions receiving any preferred offer compared to those receiving a first preference.
Secondary cross local authority offers
An applicant can apply to their local authority for any school, including those situated in another local authority.
In 2023 92.5% of secondary offers made were of schools inside the home authority. This figure reached a low of 91.4% in 2017/18 but has been very gradually increasing since then.
Primary applications
568,600 applications were received for a place at primary school in 2023, a 1.3% decrease on 2022 (and the third year showing a decrease).
There was a reduction in births in England from late 2016 onwards and this generally leads to a drop in the number of children coming into primary school. The children applying to start school in September 2023 were born between September 2018 and August 2019.
Primary results
The proportion of primary applicants receiving an offer of their first choice school has increased slightly to 92.5% - up from 92.2% in 2022.
The proportion of applicants who received an offer of any of their preferred primary schools was very slightly up compared to 2022 at 98.6%. Only 8,000 applicants did not receive an offer of one of their preferred schools (down from 9,000 last year).
A timeseries of key results from 2014 are provided in the following table.
Primary geographical variation
At local authority level the highest first preference rates were achieved in 2022 by:
Redcar & Cleveland has been in the top two for the last five years.
As in previous years, the lowest first preference rates at primary level are all in London:
Kensington & Chelsea has been in the bottom three since 2015.
The only non-London local authority in the bottom ten was:
The higher number of practical school choices available to London applicants and ability to name six preferences may encourage parents and carers to make more speculative choices for their top preferences.
As expected, there is much less variation in the proportions receiving any preferred offer compared to those receiving a first preference.
Primary cross local authority offers
An applicant can apply to their local authority for any school, including those situated in another local authority.
In 2023 96.9% of primary offers made were of schools inside the home authority. This figure has been broadly stable for the past few years.
This release concentrates on the headline figures for the proportion of children receiving their first preference or a preferred offer.
However, the data provides more information including:
In addition, the release also provides a timeseries of school level figures which 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.
This data is found in ‘all supporting files’ within the ‘explore data and files’ section of this publication. Detailed information on this data, including the processing undertaken and how it can be interpreted, is found in the ‘School level data’ section of the methodology document. Specific data quality issues are recorded in the ‘Data quality’ section.
Find out how and why we collect, process and publish these statistics.
These are Official Statistics and have been produced in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
This can be broadly interpreted to mean that these statistics are:
Find out more about the standards we follow to produce these statistics through our Standards for official statistics published by DfE guidance.
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).
OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.
You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.
If you have a specific enquiry about Secondary and primary school applications and offers statistics and data:
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