Revealed: The schools that get the most pupils into every Russell Group university

When parents are deciding which school to send their child to, there are a number of factors they will want to consider. Will their child fit in? Will they be happy? Will they thrive?

But one of the most important questions on parents’ minds, particularly if they are thinking about spending a lot of money on fees, is will their child get a place at a top university?

Every school has data on how many students get offers from the prestigious Russell Group institutions each year - but they rarely publish it.

The Telegraph has obtained detailed information, following a series of freedom of information (FOI) requests, from Russell Group universities about the schools to which they have made the highest number of offers over the past three years.

Use our interactive graphic here to explore the results. Click on each university to see which schools have received the highest number offers between 2018 and 2020.

We asked each university to provide us with a list of the top ten schools they have made the most offers to over the past three years.

Some of the institutions were centralised hubs through which students from multiple schools were given offers, so we have excluded these from the data.

Of the 24 members of the Russell Group, all but five - Cardiff, Southampton, Birmingham, Glasgow and Queen's University Belfast - responded to the FOI requests with the relevant data.

Using our geographical tool, you can select a Russell Group university from the drop down list to see where in the UK the schools with the most offers are based. Click on the map and scroll in to see the location in more detail, and hover over each icon to find out the school’s name.

Our analysis suggests that there are fifteen state schools around the country that get more offers from Russell Group universities than Eton.

The schools have between them sent over 30,000 students to the UK’s most prestigious universities over the past three years.

Use this graphic to see the schools which appeared most frequently in the Russell Group universities top ten lists. Scroll right along the table to see more schools.