A new school year began this month and whilst National Offer Day may feel like a long time ago, it was a tense time for many families and unfortunately not all children received the school allocation they had wished for.
According to Lancashire County Council, 98 per cent of children were awarded their first-choice primary school for the 2026/2027 academic year but that meant 2 per cent were left disappointed.
The latest available DfE figures show which Lancashire primary schools were the hardest to get into in September 2026 and we gathered the 21 toughest schools across the county in our previous story here.
Below howeever, we have turned our attention to just the schools in Preston so take a look at the 17 hardest schools to get into across the city next.
We have ordered these schools in ascending order so that the hardest primary schools feature last.
If your child’s primary school does not feature that is because it had an 100 per cent acceptance rate.
When this story was initially published, it only featured 16 schools as Olive School, Preston had wrongly been labeled as being in the Ribble Valley in the government’s data.
5. St Anthony's Catholic Primary School (13)
39 pupils put this school as their first choice but only 37 first choice offers were handed out which is a success rate of 94.87% | Google Maps
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6. Pool House Community Primary School (12)
19 pupils put this school as their first choice but only 18 first choice offers were handed out which is a success rate of 94.74% | Google Maps
7. Holme Slack Community Primary School (11)
20 pupils put this school as their first choice but only 18 first choice offers were handed out which is a success rate of 90% | Google Maps
8. Longsands Community Primary School (10)
34 pupils put this school as their first choice but only 28 first choice offers were handed out which is a success rate of 82.35% | Google Maps