New data has revealed the toughest primary schools to secure a place at.
The Great British Schools Guide identified the 10 hardest-to-access primary schools in Essex by combining catchment area data with enrolment figures.
The guide, which excludes grammar schools, faith schools with non-distance-based admissions, and schools without two full years of pupil data, considers schools oversubscribed if they have more pupils on roll than their recorded capacity.
It also uses median pupil distance as a proxy for catchment area, defining oversubscription as having more students enrolled than the school is designed to accommodate.
What are the hardest schools to get into in Essex?
Explaining what the figures show, the Great British Schools Guide said: "Each figure is a median distance: half of the school’s pupils live nearer than that number and half live further away.
"They are a proxy for catchment and are not official admission boundaries.
"Distance describes where a school’s pupils live, not how hard it is to get a place – for that, the figures are combined with how full the school is in the hardest and easiest lists in this series."
The analysis is based on mainstream state schools in Essex with at least 30 pupils in both the 2023 and 2025 cohorts.
Data is drawn from the National Pupil Database.
Excluded from the change lists are special schools, alternative provision settings, pupil referral units, nurseries, and any schools that opened or closed during the 2023–2025 period.
The 10 hardest schools to get into, combining the tight catchment with oversubscription (pupils against recorded capacity), are:
The ‘% full’ column is pupils measured against recorded capacity, but it is not a count of applications, and those are not published school by school.
Essex secondary school crowned best England
Earlier this year, a school in Essex was named the best in the whole country.
The Telegraph updated its 'league table' outlining the best secondary schools in the UK.
The news outlet analysed data from almost 3,500 state-sector secondary schools and provided each with a score out of 40.
Factors used to determine these scores included:
- GCSE performance
- Attendance rates
- Class sizes
- Attainment 8 scores
The Telegraph’s search tool allows users to enter postcodes from across the UK to find the best secondary schools nearby.
However, at the top of the whole table, was the King Edward VI Grammar School (KEGS) in Chelmsford, scoring a perfect 40/40.
It has a population of 1,138 students, with average class sizes of 21.5.
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It also has an attainment 8 score of 83.3, which is a score that measures pupils' performance across eight subjects, including Maths and English.
The school has a higher percentage of pupils getting 5s or higher in their English Baccalaureate at 97.3%, far higher than the national average of 18%.
Is your child's school on the list of the hardest to get into? Let us know in the comments.
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