Just over 170 children due to start school in September did not get their school of first choice, new figures have revealed.

But officials at Cumbria County Council say that despite the disappointment felt by those involved, the county’s primary school allocation figures are among the best in the country.

This year’s figures show that significantly fewer parents were left disappointed after bidding for the school of their choice.

The figures for school place allocation released by Cumbria County Councilshow that for this year’s batch of new starters education officials refused first choices for 171 children.

Last year, the number of refusals was 249.

Usually, for those children who are refused, the reason is that their first choice school has been oversubscribed because of its popularity.

This year’s figures show a slight improvement in the number of parents getting their first choice school – just over 96 per cent compared to just under 95 per cent last year.

The number offered their first or second choice school for their child had also gone up – but only slightly, rising to 98.6 per cent, compared to 98 per cent last year.

The percentage of parents who got first, second, or third choice schools for their child was 99 per cent, compared to a figure last year of 98.65 per cent.

Out of 4,668 applicants for school places in September in Cumbria, who applied by the closing date, 4,497 were offered a place at their first preference school.


Clare Feeney-Johnson Councillor Clare Feeney-Johnson, the county council’s cabinet Member for Schools and Learning, said: “The figures released today reflect the hard work we put in to ensure parents can get the school pace they want for their child – Cumbria is amongst the best performing areas when it comes to this measure. 

"In the county we have so many good and outstanding local primary schools, that means making a decision about where to send their child is much easier for parents.”

But Graham Frost, Cumbria branch secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said there are still too many disappointed parents.

He said: “It’s far better to have local accountability, where resources are deployed according to the needs of schools in the area rather than a kind of survival of the fittest approach.”

He said schools were suffering under a “fragmented” education system with a increasingly sidelined role for local authorities, which traditionally had a strategic planning role.

Mr Frost added: “This is what we as a profession predicted: a crisis of rising population alongside a real terms reduction of investment in schools.”