Exam Results & Academic Performance
Understanding a school's academic performance requires looking beyond a single headline figure. The Department for Education uses several key metrics to evaluate how well a secondary school supports its pupils to achieve across a range of subjects. Below, we break down the latest 2024-2025 data for St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School and provide honest comparisons against the local BCP context and national benchmarks. It is important to note that when we mention rank here, it is out of 22 total BCP secondary schools with published data, which includes selective grammar schools. Therefore, a comprehensive school's placement should be viewed in that mixed context.
Attainment 8: Overall Pupil Achievement
What it measures: Attainment 8 calculates the average achievement of pupils in up to eight qualifications, including English and Mathematics (which are double-weighted), three English Baccalaureate (EBacc) subjects, and three other approved qualifications.
For 2024-2025, St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School recorded an Attainment 8 score of 47. This score sits just above the England state-funded mainstream average of 46.3 (for 2023-24). Within the local authority, it ranks 12 of 22. While it is below the overall BCP average of 50.77 (which is skewed higher by local grammar schools), it is very close to the BCP average for non-selective schools, which is 46.44. By comparison, the prior academic year (2023-2024) saw the school achieve a slightly higher score of 49.
It is also crucial to look at the attainment gap for disadvantaged pupils. The Disadvantaged Attainment 8 score for the school is 38.1. Comparing this to the overall score of 47 highlights an attainment gap of nearly 9 points, a common challenge nationally but an important factor for parents considering how the school supports all demographic groups.
Progress 8: Value Added Over Time
What it measures: Progress 8 captures the progress a pupil makes from the end of primary school (Key Stage 2) to the end of secondary school (Key Stage 4) compared to pupils across England who achieved similar results at the end of primary school. A score of 0.0 means pupils made expected progress.
Note on data availability: Progress 8 was not published for 2024-2025 (no KS2 baseline for that cohort). Value shown is the most recent available year (2023-2024).
Because the 2024-2025 cohort did not sit KS2 SATs due to the pandemic, Progress 8 data cannot be generated for this specific year. Therefore, we look at the most recent available data from 2023-2024, where the school achieved a Progress 8 score of 0.15.
A score of 0.15 indicates that pupils at St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School, on average, made slightly better progress than their peers nationally. Within the local authority, this placed them 11 of 21 (again, across all schools including selective ones). For context, the BCP average for non-selective schools in that year was 0.11. The confidence interval for this score ranges from -0.04 to 0.33, meaning the school's true value added is statistically in line with or slightly above the national average.
The "Basics": English and Maths
What it measures: This metric shows the percentage of pupils who achieved a passing grade in both English and Mathematics GCSEs. A grade 4 is considered a "standard pass" (equivalent to an old C grade), while a grade 5 is a "strong pass".
At St Peter's Catholic Comprehensive School, 46.9% of pupils achieved a strong pass (grades 9-5) in both English and Maths in 2024-2025. When we broaden the criteria to look at standard passes (grades 9-4), a significant majority of pupils—67.4%—secured these crucial foundational qualifications. Looking back at the 2023-2024 academic year, the school had a strong pass rate of 53.6%, showing a slight dip in the most recent cohort but maintaining solid foundational achievement for the majority of students.
The English Baccalaureate (EBacc)
What it measures: The EBacc is a set of subjects at GCSE that keeps young people's options open for further study and future careers (English language and literature, maths, the sciences, geography or history, and a language). The Average Point Score (APS) calculates the average grade across these specific subjects.
The school has an EBacc entry rate of 23.4%, meaning just under a quarter of the cohort is entered for this specific combination of traditional academic subjects. For those pupils, the Average Point Score (APS) is 4.02. This APS ranks 14 of 22 in the local authority, sitting very close to the BCP non-selective average of 4.16. While the entry rate suggests the school offers a broader curriculum path beyond just the traditional EBacc subjects, those who do take the EBacc route achieve solid average grades around the grade 4 mark.