90% get first choice secondary school place in Cambridgeshire

Applications for secondary school places has increased by more than 300 compared to last year.

Cambridgeshire County Council received nearly 6,691 applications for secondary school places by the deadline of October 31, 2018.

Of these more than 5,990 (89.5 per cent) resulted in children being offered a place at their first preference school compared to 5,561 last year.

A further 449 (6.7 per cent) children have received the offer of a place at their second or third preference school.

Jonathan Lewis, service director for education for the county council, urged applicants to use all three preferences when applying.

He said: “We dealt with significantly more applications for secondary school places in the county this year and we expect this trend to continue for the coming years.

“We are planning for this by working with existing schools to increase their capacity and to plan for new secondary schools in the areas where demand is greatest with a planned investment in secondary school places of £200m between 2019-20 and 2023-24.

“We advise all applicants to use all three of their preferences when applying for a secondary school place and to ensure that they include their catchment school as one of their preferences to give themselves the best chance of securing a place.”