Cornwall's best and worst secondary schools for pupil progression

Penrice Academy in St Austell -Credit:BPM MEDIA
Penrice Academy in St Austell -Credit:BPM MEDIA


The secondary schools in Cornwall where pupils make the best and worst progress have been revealed. To track each school's progress, the government annually compiles performance data for each school and college across the country.

The latest data available is for the 2022/2023 academic year which represents a period when qualifications had returned to pre-pandemic standards. According to the highest ‘Progress 8’ score average among schools within Cornwall Council's catchment, Penrice Academy in St Austell has come out on top.

Average scores for the statistic are given a rating of zero, with numbers above zero indicating a higher than average progress made, whilst a score below zero indicates less progress than expected. The report does state, however, that there are ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected individual schools, colleges and students differently. Therefore, this may have impacted a school's performance.

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‘Progress 8’ is a way of measuring the progress that pupils make from the end of key stage two to the end of key stage four. It takes a pupil’s best scoring subjects at GCSE alongside maths, English and the sciences and works out how well each pupil is doing on average compared to their peers in primary school.

The report used data from gov.uk to find the ‘Progress 8’ scores and data about pupils' exam results to measure the schools was taken from last year’s GCSE results. ‘Progress 8’ scores indicated how much help each secondary school has given pupils to improve their overall grades.

Below is a list of Cornwall's best and worst secondary schools for pupil progression.

Cornwall's top five secondary schools:

  • Penrice Academy (rated well above average at 0.54)

  • The Roseland Academy (rated above average at 0.41)

  • Mullion School (rated above average at 0.41)

  • Penryn College (rated above average at 0.27)

  • Poltair School (rated above average at 0.24)

Cornwall's bottom five secondary schools:

  • Pool Academy (rated well below average at -0.81)

  • Fowey River Academy (rated well below average at -0.65)

  • Bodmin College (rated well below average at -0.61)

  • Sir James Smith's School (rated below average at -0.47)

  • Saltash Community School (rated below average at -0.45)

Saltash Community School was rated sixth lowest for pupil progression but CornwallLive omitted the first lowest school because it is exclusively a special education school.

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