Number of applications to a school

[Cumberlover76]

Is it possible to find out how many applications a specific primary school received for 2015 entry? I've found data to a LA level but wondered if it was possible to get it at an individual school level anywhere online.

[angelcake20]

Our county publishes them in detail each April but I don't know if this is a requirement. Can you say which authority you are looking at?

[lougle]

Our county publishes a detailed breakdown of all places applied for and how the places were allocated. The only caveat is that the number of places applied for includes all choices, so a parent applying for a school as 6th choice is still a place applied for. So you can't tell how many got their first choice school from the data, etc.

[Cumberlover76]

yes, it's Devon

[Cedar03]

It is published but as previous poster said, it includes everyone who put the school down as one of their choices. So some of our local schools get hundreds of applications but in reality that's a lot of people just making sure they've put down a third or fourth choice (or whatever).

[angelcake20]

I can't see anything obvious for Devon. Publishing detailed statistics, including numbers admitted under each criterion, was a requirement of the 2006 Admissions Code but the 2014 one doesn't seem to be so specific. Perhaps try contacting the council. And yes, divide the number of applications by the number of choices you get to get a rough idea of oversubscription.

[tldr]

Have you tried the school's website? Ours is there though pretty well hidden. If not, call the school.

More useful than the actual numbers is the criteria they used for the last admission (so you can see for example if anyone got in on distance and what that distance is or if they got filled with faith/sibling criteria).

[Inkymess]

I have to add that our la publishes stats but they are meaningless really in terms of no applying. Depends on geography too. We get 3-6 preferences. Some do 1, most do 3 and some add extra. Everyone tends to put the 3 nearest that are highly sought after but that often includes faith schools which people have no chance of getting in. Our school has 400 every year for 90 places but is the most popular non faith school. The cut off is always less than 0.5 so beyond that is a wild card. The RC has 250 for 60 so lots are not RC families. CofE has 200 for 30 but only 40 actually put it as 1st choice.
And it changes every year ..

[lougle]

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.devon.gov.uk/admissions-firststep.pdf&ved=0CCAQFjACahUKEwj93rbg9_rHAhVDXRoKHdPZDEM&usg=AFQjCNFoBZFx13JaXxbYP4tbC8xOgrqVMA&sig2=phZTzscUjwGZcfUgTbMAMw" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">This booklet tells you how many places were allocated to each school in Devon last year. It doesn't tell you anything more detailed though.