Nine in 10 parents couldn't secure a place for their kids at the UK's most popular school.
Exclusive figures show just 10% of families secured a place after choosing the Royal School, in Wolverhampton for their first preference this September.
Competition is becoming more fierce compared to to 2020 when 12% of first preferences secured a spot.
The school had 8.4 first choice applications for each of the 26 places, making 219 in total.
Only 22 families were successful after choosing the secondary as their first pick.
Taking second and third preferences into account, figures show 34.2 applications for each place offered.
Three second preferences and zero third preference children secured a place.
You can check the most sought-after primary and secondary schools in your local area by searching for them with our interactive search bar below.
Wallington County Grammar School, in Sutton, was the next hardest secondary to get into, with just 14% of those who put it as a first preference getting a place.
There was just over one first preference for the school, a total of 174, for each of its 171 places offered.
Beaumont Primary School, Croydon, was the hardest primary school to secure a place.
The school had 4.4 first preferences for each of the 30 places offered, with just 23% of those who put the school as their first choice getting a place.
That was down from a 26% success rate in 2020, when it was also the toughest primary to get into.
Overall, the primary school was put down as a preference 435 times. However, no second or third preferences were successful.
Liverpool College, in Liverpool, saw 307 first preferences for 84 places offered at its primary school - 3.7 per place - with just 26% of parents who put it as a first choice being offered a place.
With children returning to school for the new year, applications for places for those set to start primary or secondary school next September are starting to open.
The application deadline for applying for a secondary place is October 31, while it is January 15, 2022, for primary applications.
For this September, 81% of applicants got their first choice of secondary school.
That was down from 82% in 2020, which may be in part due to a small increase in the number of children applying for Year 7 places.
The proportion of primary school applicants who received their first choice school rose from 90% to 92%.
The number of primary school applications dropped by 5% for this year, partly due to lower birth figures since 2016 but also because of higher levels of late applications, which aren’t included in these figures.
The data from the Department for Education is based on figures from National Offers Day, so data held directly by individual schools may differ, for example, because late applications were included.
