Royal borough is best place to live for outstanding primary schools

‘The way to play the game is to make sure you choose a school you are certain to get into as your last choice’

THE best place in the country to live if you want to get your child into a top primary school is the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, an analysis by The Daily Telegraph has found.

More than a quarter (26 per cent) of state primaries in the borough were given the highest Ofsted grade and were also under-subscribed last year, according to new figures. Despite being rated as “outstanding”, these schools had fewer applicants selecting them as their first choice than the number of places they had available.

Using data obtained from the Department for Education under freedom of information requests, The Telegraph has analysed all the schools in England to see how over or under-subscribed they were, as well as their Ofsted grade.

Of the 26 primary schools in Kensington and Chelsea, 16 were graded by Ofsted as “outstanding” and seven of these were under-subscribed.

Hackney emerged as the second best borough in the country for getting children into top primaries, where one in five (21 per cent) of its “outstanding” schools were under-subscribed. Richmond upon Thames came third, followed by Trafford, Gateshead, and Windsor and Maidenhead.

Newham, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Bournemouth and Poole were also in the top 10 places in England to live if you want the best chance of getting children into excellent primary schools.

Elizabeth Campbell, the Conservative leader of Kensington and Chelsea, said the council had spent millions of pounds over the last decade on opening new schools and improving existing ones. She explained that the majority of children in the borough were educated at fee-paying institutions, meaning that there were fewer pupils competing for places at state schools.

“Fifty-five per cent of our children go to private schools,” she said.

“You might have quite a lot of the middle-class children going to private school, hence the even more extraordinary results for the state schools that so many are outstanding.”

Lord Lucas, editor in chief of The Good Schools Guide, said parents still needed to be strategic when making their choices.

“The point of having up to six choices of schools is that you use your first few on ones you really want to get into but might not have a chance at,” he said.

“The way to play the game is to make sure you choose a school that you are certain to get into as your last choice.”