How Hartlepool families fared with primary school places for September 2020

Parents across the country have been finding out if they have managed to get their first choice of primary school for their children who are starting this year.

Overall in Hartlepool 94.98% of children have been offered a place to start school at their first choice place in September.

A further 3.99% of children have been offered their second preference, with just 0.19% of children offered their third preference.

In total 0.84% of children have not been offered one of their preferred choices, which includes children for whom parents/carers gave only one preference.

Amanda Whitehead, Hartlepool Borough Council’s Assistant Director for Education, said they were pleased with the figures, adding they are almost 5% higher than the latest national average.

She said: “Once again, our figures are very good news for the vast majority of parents/carers – our 94.98% rate for offering first preferences exceeds the most recent available (2019) national primary first preference rates of 90.6%.

“The Council’s Admissions Team and primary schools always do their very best to achieve parents’/carers’ first preferences and I would like to congratulate them on their hard work to achieve these excellent outcomes this year.”

In comparison, last year 97.5% of children in Hartlepool received an offer to start at their first choice school, although the rate was 95% the previous year, in 2018.

Meanwhile last year 1.6% of youngsters were offered their second choice, 0.5% offered their third choice, and 0.4% of children were not offered one of their preferred school choices.

Hundreds of thousands of four and five-year-olds across England have been allocated school places today (Thursday, April 16) on what is commonly known as National Offer Day.

The Department for Education has changed its rules this year amid the coronavirus pandemic so that parents unhappy with their school place will not have to make an appeal in person.

Appeal panel hearings will be able to take place "in person, by telephone, video conference or through a paper-based appeal".

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspaper.