Nearly 95% of children in Nottingham have been offered a place at their first or second-choice primary school – up 2% on last year.
Figures out today (Tuesday 18 April) show that 3,345 (89%) will be going to their first-choice school in September, while 217 (6%) got their second choice.
In the face of increasing demand, Nottingham City Council has ensured that every child in Nottingham has been offered a place at school for the autumn term.
The authority has invested £41.9million to create thousands of extra school places in Nottingham over the past seven years, which will total more than 4,000 additional primary places once all year groups are full by 2022.
Councillor Sam Webster, Portfolio Holder for Education, Employment and Skills at Nottingham City Council, said: “I’m delighted to see another increase in the number of children getting a place at their parents’ first or second-choice school for September.
“A lot of hard work goes into making that happen and I’m also really pleased to see this positive effect of the council’s forward planning.
“Back in 2009 we began working on an ambitious expansion plan across Nottingham – backed by significant investment – to create thousands of new places at our city’s primary schools. We knew that demand was going to increase and so teamed up with a number of schools – both maintained and academies – to help increase capacity where we could.
“Our ambition remains to ensure that all pupils in Nottingham attend a good school, close to home and our on-going expansion strategy means that we are creating more places to achieve this goal.
“We understand that choosing a school for their child is one of the most important decisions that parents have to make, and we will continue to ensure that process is as simple as possible.
“The growth in pupil numbers will feed through to local secondary schools and I’d urge the government to lift the ban on councils building new schools. While our programme of expansions has dealt with growing numbers in primaries, our attention must now turn to creating additional secondary places.”