Parents most likely to get secondary school of choice in Northumberland
New research from the Education Policy Institute (EPI) has shed light on the secondary school preferences of parents.
It revealed that Northumberland was the local authority area where parents were most likely (98.7%) to get their first choice of school.
Parents in London tend to apply to more schools than elsewhere because there is a lower likelihood of securing their first choice. Of the 20 local authorities with the lowest chance of being offered first preference, Birmingham is the only one outside of London.
In the North East, North Tyneside and Gateshead are among the 24 local authorities where more than 10% of parents were refused all of their top three choices.
The research also points to different likelihoods of success based on ethnicity. White families in London applying to good or outstanding schools are 18-19 percentage points more likely than black or Chinese families to be offered their first preference.
The EPI research does not take home to school distance into account and suggests this may be a partial explanation for the divergence. However, the EPI points to similar findings in other research that does control for home-to-school distance into account and suggests there must be other factors at play.
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