School admissions in Alnwick
How heavily each school was applied to for September 2026 entry, from the applications and offers every admissions authority reports to the DfE. None of these schools has a published admissions cutoff distance. Sorted by first preferences per place. We don't invent rankings: the order is arithmetic on a published figure, not a view about which school is better.
Alnwick in figures
For Reception places in September 2026, families named the 9 schools in Alnwick first 135 times for 135 places: 1.00 first choices per place, against 1.01 across the Northumberland authority's 122 schools. One of the 9 had more first choices than places.
Totals for the schools listed on this page. Applications and offers on national offer day, DfE; last-offer distances as the council published them.
Reception places, September 2026
9 schools. 1 received more first preferences than they had places.
| School | First preferences per place | Places |
|---|---|---|
| Hipsburn Primary School | 1.08 | 13 |
| Branton Primary School and Nursery | 1.00 | 5 |
| Embleton Vincent Edwards Church of England Primary School | 1.00 | 12 |
| Longhoughton Church of England Primary School | 1.00 | 7 |
| Ncea Harry Hotspur Church of England Primary School | 1.00 | 8 |
| Shilbottle Primary School | 1.00 | 15 |
| Swansfield Park Primary School | 1.00 | 43 |
| Whittingham Church of England Primary School | 1.00 | 8 |
| St Paul's Catholic Primary School, Alnwick | 0.96 | 24 |
First preferences per place is the number of families naming the school first, divided by its published admission number. Above 1.00 means more first choices than places. It is not a ranking and not a measure of quality: a popular school can be easy to get into and a quiet one hard, because places are allocated by each school's own criteria, siblings and faith and banding first, with distance often the last tie-breaker. Applications and offers on national offer day, DfE.