School's out: New data reveals the 10 hardest primary schools to get into in London as catchment areas shrink

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Anna White18 April 2018

The pressure to find a place in a popular primary school in Greater London is intensifying as the capital’s catchment areas shrink dramatically.

In a week when 100,000 families found out where their children would start their education, Homes & Property can reveal the smallest admissions boundary in London is now down to just 200 metres, or 0.11 miles.

It means parents need to live no more than a few streets from a school to stand a chance of finding a place there for their child.

New data from FindaSchool, by online directory 192.com, names the hardest primary schools to get into by distance, and shows the smallest catchment radius shrank by nearly five per cent from 2016 to 2017.

The average distance for the 20 schools that are toughest to get into diminished by close to three per cent over the same time frame.

Manorside Primary School in Barnet, with an “outstanding” Ofsted rating, had the tightest admissions area. With one class per year, it sits in the densely populated terraced streets between Finchley Central, the North Circular and Muswell Hill Playing Fields.

After Manorside, the top five includes Bousfield Primary School in Kensington & Chelsea, in the residential triangle between Brompton Road, Fulham Road and the A3320, with a catchment radius of 205 metres; Bygrove Primary in Tower Hamlets (0.14 metres); St Matthew’s Church of England in Hillingdon, and the Eleanor Palmer school in Camden.

Borough School Cut-off distance of catchment area (metres)
Barnet Manorside Primary School 188m
Kensington Bousfield Primary School 205m
Tower Hamlets Bygrove Primary School 227m
Hillingdon St Matthew's CofE Primary School 232m
Camden Eleanor Palmer Primary School 238m
Camden St Luke's Church of England Primary 241m
Hackney Kingsmead Primary School 241m
Islington William Tyndale Primary School 241m
Newham William Davies Primary School 286m
Barnet Whitings Hill Primary School 288m

Simon Kelman, director at 192.com, says: “In highly populated areas there is more demand and there are not enough schools in areas that have an increasing number of new housing developments.” This issue is particularly prevalent in London’s inner core in areas of dense housing stock and residential towers.

Research today from Savills reveals that last year, almost five per cent of inner London primary school applicants didn’t get into one of their top three preferred schools, compared to 2.8 per cent across England, and that house values within 500 metres of strong-demand schools rose 80 per cent in the last decade compared with a 66 per cent London average.

In Brent, Camden, Sutton, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster, more than 10 per cent of applicants were placed in a primary school outside their borough.