# School Applications and Offers

> The School Applications and Offers carries 24 published figures read from 4 sources' own pages; the 15 published figures given by phase run from 0.70 to 94.90 percent, read 11 November 2026.

Catchment Checker · https://catchmentchecker.co.uk/datasets/school-applications-and-offers/ · computed 2026-11-11

**Range by phase:** 0.7 to 94.9 % (range 0.7 to 94.9 %; 16 published figures; 4 of 13 sources read publish one).

4 of the 13 named sources read in full publish a figure; 9 publish none, read 11 November 2026.

## By phase and governance type

| Breakdown | Median | Range | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| phase secondary | 51.45 % | 4.9 to 89.2 % | 4 |
| phase primary | 7.5 % | 1.9 to 48.8 % | 3 |
| phase sixth form | 78 % | 78 to 78 % | 1 |
| phase special | 53.1 % | 53.1 to 53.1 % | 1 |
| governance type academy | 2.8 % | 2.8 to 2.8 % | 1 |
| governance type foundation | 24.1 % | 24.1 to 24.1 % | 1 |
| governance type community and voluntary controlled | 15.6 % | 15.6 to 15.6 % | 1 |

## Every figure, with its source

One row per source: the figure the source's own page publishes, the page, and the day it was read.

| Source | Figure | Breakdown | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| [DfE - Primary and secondary school applications and offers, 2025-26](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers/2025-26) | 94.9 % | secondary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Primary and secondary school applications and offers, 2025-26](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers/2025-26) | 92.6 % |  | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School pupils and their characteristics](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics) | 83.9 % | secondary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Primary and secondary school applications and offers, 2025-26](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers/2025-26) | 83.5 % | secondary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) | 81 % | secondary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) | 78 % | sixth form | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School pupils and their characteristics](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics) | 53.1 % | special | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School pupils and their characteristics](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics) | 48.8 % | primary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School pupils and their characteristics](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics) | 48.2 % |  | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025) | 24.1 % | foundation | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025) | 19.9 % | secondary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) | 19 % | secondary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025) | 17.7 % |  | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025) | 15.6 % | community and voluntary controlled | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) | 15 % |  | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) | 14 % | primary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) | 13 % |  | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025) | 4.9 % | secondary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025) | 3.9 % | secondary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025) | 2.8 % | academy | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025) | 1.9 % | primary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) | 1 % | primary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) | 0.7 % | secondary | 2026-11-11 |
| [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) | 0.5 % |  | 2026-11-11 |

## The sentence each figure was read from (24)

- [DfE - Primary and secondary school applications and offers, 2025-26](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers/2025-26), read 2026-11-11: "The proportion of secondary applicants receiving an offer of one of their top three preferred schools was 94.9%, a slight increase from 94.6% in 2024."
- [DfE - Primary and secondary school applications and offers, 2025-26](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers/2025-26), read 2026-11-11: "Primary school applicants continue to be more likely to be offered their first preference school than secondary applicants (92.6% and 83.5% respectively)."
- [DfE - School pupils and their characteristics](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics), read 2026-11-11: "83.9% of secondary schools are academies or free schools, accounting for 83.6% of secondary school pupils."
- [DfE - Primary and secondary school applications and offers, 2025-26](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers/2025-26), read 2026-11-11: "The proportion of secondary applicants receiving an offer of their first choice school increased slightly from 82.9% in 2024 to 83.5% in 2025."
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity), read 2026-11-11: "For secondary schools, 81% had one or more unfilled place (2,770 schools)."
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity), read 2026-11-11: "The proportion of schools with unfilled sixth form places (where the number of sixth form pupils on roll are lower than the sixth form capacity) was 78% in 2024/25, which has remained stable since 2020/21."
- [DfE - School pupils and their characteristics](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics), read 2026-11-11: "53.1% of state-funded special schools are academies or free schools, accounting for 49.7% of special school pupils"
- [DfE - School pupils and their characteristics](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics), read 2026-11-11: "48.8% of primary schools are now academies or free schools, accounting for 49.9% of the primary school population."
- [DfE - School pupils and their characteristics](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics), read 2026-11-11: "While 48.2% of all schools were academies, over half of all pupils (60.4%) were attending an academy."
- [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025), read 2026-11-11: "Foundation schools had the highest rate of successful appeals in 2025, at 24.1% of appeals heard."
- [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025), read 2026-11-11: "5,903 secondary appeals were successful, representing 19.9% of those heard."
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity), read 2026-11-11: "The number of state-funded secondary schools at or in excess of capacity was 651 in 2024/25 (19% of secondary schools)."
- [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025), read 2026-11-11: "1,595 primary appeals were successful, representing 17.7% of those heard."
- [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025), read 2026-11-11: "By contrast, the rate for community and voluntary controlled schools has varied from 14.8% in 2021 to 19.1% in 2018, and is the lowest in 2025 at 15.6%."
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity), read 2026-11-11: "15% of state-funded schools were at or in excess of capacity in 2024/25."
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity), read 2026-11-11: "The proportion of primary schools at or in excess of capacity is at the lowest level since the data collection began at 14%, down from a high of 23% in 2014/15."
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity), read 2026-11-11: "Across both primary and secondary schools, the total number of unfilled places was 1.2 million in 2024/25 (13% of total school places available)."
- [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025), read 2026-11-11: "At secondary school phase, 37,289 appeals were lodged (approximately 4.9% of secondary admissions) and 29,640 (approximately 3.9%) were heard."
- [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025), read 2026-11-11: "Overall, the proportion of appeals heard was similar in 2016 (3.6%) and 2025 (3.9%), although it rose as high as 4.9% in 2020 before falling back over subsequent years."
- [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025), read 2026-11-11: "Academies had the highest rate of appeals heard in 2025 at 2.8%."
- [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025), read 2026-11-11: "In 2025, 14,584 primary appeals were lodged (equating to approximately 1.9% of total primary admissions), and 8,999 (approximately 1.2% of admissions) were heard by an appeals panel."
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity), read 2026-11-11: "The total anticipated number of primary pupils forecast by local authorities in England shows a decline of around 1% per year until the end of the forecast period (2029/30)."
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity), read 2026-11-11: "In secondary schools, there were 29,000 (0.7%) pupils in places that exceeded their school’s capacity."
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity), read 2026-11-11: "In total, the number of pupils in places that exceeded their school's capacity is 47,000 (0.5% of places) in May 2025."

## Read in full, publishes no figure

- [DfE - applications and offers: methodology](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/methodology/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers), read 2026-11-11: read in full and no accepted figure on the page
- [DfE - secondary and primary school applications and offers 2025 data set](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-catalogue/data-set/65b074b6-b6df-419b-af04-dd0f19865b59), read 2026-11-11: read in full and no accepted figure on the page
- [DfE - secondary and primary school applications and offers 2024 data set](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-catalogue/data-set/9cfdc3d7-279b-49eb-b713-4fcfeb0e519c), read 2026-11-11: read in full and no accepted figure on the page
- [GOV.UK - Primary and secondary school applications and offers: 2026](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers-2026), read 2026-10-11: read in full and no accepted figure on the page
- [DfE - admission appeals methodology](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/methodology/school-admission-appeals-in-england-methodology), read 2026-11-11: read in full and no accepted figure on the page
- [Scottish Government - school placing requests and appeal hearings: guidance for local authorities](https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-school-placing-requests-and-appeal-hearings/), read 2026-09-11: read in full and no accepted figure on the page
- [Scottish Government - school placing requests and appeals: information for parents](https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-school-placing-requests-and-appeals-in-2020/), read 2026-09-11: read in full and no accepted figure on the page
- [Scottish Government - school education statistics collection](https://www.gov.scot/collections/school-education-statistics/), read 2026-10-11: read in full and no accepted figure on the page
- [the release per series](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics), read 2026-11-11: read in full and no accepted figure on the page

## Methodology

Every row is a verbatim sentence read from the named source's own page through our fetch service on the date shown, hash-pinned to the stored read (the sha of the page's visible text; the raw page is mirrored to R2). 4 of the 13 named sources that could be read published a usable figure; 9 published none and are recorded as not published, never filled in; 1 could not be read (blocked, dead or unreachable) and count nowhere. The headline figures (median, minimum, maximum, quartiles) are over ONE figure per source for each breakdown it prices, in % (a source's median where its page yielded several accepted sentences for one breakdown), so a page that gives figures for several breakdowns gives one for each and N counts 16 figures, never sentences; 177 candidate sentence(s) were refused by a reviewer with the reason recorded. The fuller derivation this dataset is chartered to grow into (not yet what the figures above are; they are each source's own published figure as read): the DfE, Scottish and Welsh releases stacked into one per-authority series - first-preference and any-preference offer rates, appeals lodged, heard and upheld, capacity and unfilled places, pupil numbers - and then the join that gives the parent a real answer: the offer rate and the appeal success rate of the authority beside the cut-off distance of the school they are asking about, with the falling-roll trend that says whether that distance is likely to widen. Each figure is an observation sourced to the department that published it, dated, never recomputed as ours.

## Sources

- [DfE - Primary and secondary school applications and offers, 2025-26](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers/2025-26) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [DfE - applications and offers: methodology](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/methodology/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [DfE - secondary and primary school applications and offers 2025 data set](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-catalogue/data-set/65b074b6-b6df-419b-af04-dd0f19865b59) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [DfE - secondary and primary school applications and offers 2024 data set](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-catalogue/data-set/9cfdc3d7-279b-49eb-b713-4fcfeb0e519c) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [GOV.UK - Primary and secondary school applications and offers: 2026](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/primary-and-secondary-school-applications-and-offers-2026) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [DfE - Admission appeals in England, 2025](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/admission-appeals-in-england/2025) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [DfE - admission appeals methodology](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/methodology/school-admission-appeals-in-england-methodology) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [DfE - School capacity](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [DfE - School pupils and their characteristics](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [Scottish Government - school placing requests and appeal hearings: guidance for local authorities](https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-school-placing-requests-and-appeal-hearings/) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [Scottish Government - school placing requests and appeals: information for parents](https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-school-placing-requests-and-appeals-in-2020/) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [Scottish Government - school education statistics collection](https://www.gov.scot/collections/school-education-statistics/) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [House of Commons Library - School places and admissions in England](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN07147/SN07147.pdf) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)
- [the release per series](https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics) (the publisher's own terms; quoted for reporting and comment)

## Cite or embed

- The School Applications and Offers carries 24 published figures read from 4 sources' own pages; the 15 published figures given by phase run from 0.70 to 94.90 percent, read 11 November 2026.
- 4 of the 13 named sources read in full publish a figure; 9 publish none, read 11 November 2026.
- School Applications and Offers, phase secondary: median 51.45 percent across 4 sources, read 11 November 2026.
- School Applications and Offers, phase primary: median 7.50 percent across 3 sources, read 11 November 2026.
- School Applications and Offers, phase sixth form: median 78 percent across 1 source, read 11 November 2026.
- School Applications and Offers, phase special: median 53.10 percent across 1 source, read 11 November 2026.
- School Applications and Offers, governance type academy: median 2.80 percent across 1 source, read 11 November 2026.
- School Applications and Offers, governance type foundation: median 24.10 percent across 1 source, read 11 November 2026.
- School Applications and Offers, governance type community and voluntary controlled: median 15.60 percent across 1 source, read 11 November 2026.

Cite as: "catchmentchecker.co.uk School Applications and Offers", updated 2026-11-11, https://catchmentchecker.co.uk/datasets/school-applications-and-offers/.

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