Ashlyns School
Local authority school · ages 11–18 · with a sixth form
Above average on 3 of the four headline measures, below on 1 — 19th of 79 for average grade in Hertfordshire.
Berkhamsted · Hertfordshire · one of 80 state secondaries
Summary
Ashlyns School sits 19th of 79 state secondaries in Hertfordshire for average GCSE grade. 86.2% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 71.7% across Hertfordshire. 70.7% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject it is furthest clear of Hertfordshire in geography and combined science, with nothing measurably behind. Ofsted: Good in September 2023.
It is a school of 1,561 pupils, taking ages 11 to 18 and running its own sixth form. 11.7% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, and 15.1% are on SEN support with a further 2.1% holding an education, health and care plan. 37.7% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 47% entered across Hertfordshire, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 34.3% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 18.1% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, about the same as Hertfordshire, and 94.4% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Hertfordshire, and count as ahead or behind only where the gap is wider than the year-to-year swing that entry group would produce.
The school·Hertfordshire
Inspection
Good
Inspected September 2023
- Behaviour and attitudes
- Good
- Leadership and management
- Good
- Personal development
- Good
- Quality of education
- Good
- September 2023 Full inspection Good
That grade was given under the framework that ran from September 2019 to 2024, when Ofsted still issued one overall grade.
Attendance
18% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 18% across Hertfordshire and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
86%
Passed English & maths grade 4+, an old grade C
well above average
Hertfordshire 72% · England 65%
38%
Entered for the EBacc the academic core of subjects
below average
Hertfordshire 47% · England 41%
After Year 11
94% stayed in education, <1% started an apprenticeship (2022/23 leavers)
GCSE results by subject
2024/25 · share reaching grade 4 or above · a standard pass, the old grade C
Every bar is on the same 0–100% scale, so subjects can be read against each other as well as against the county and England. A dash means the figure does not exist rather than being zero. The county and England lines cover state-funded schools only, the same schools you can browse here, because independent schools sit outside the Department for Education's subject release and outside this site.
Compare these subjects against another school, side by side.
Maths is the subject most of this year group sat. Maths tutors on Tutorperch.
Parent guides
Thinking about a tutor?
Are tutors worth it?
What tutoring can and cannot fix, and how to tell which you are looking at.
How much does a tutor cost
Typical hourly rates by subject and level, and what changes them.
When to start tutoring
Why the term before an exam is usually later than parents expect.
How to know if it's working
What to look for after a month, beyond the next test score.
Sixth form · Key stage 5·2024/25
Sixth form
2024/25 · 155 A level students
Ofsted rated sixth-form provision Outstanding at the last inspection
B-
Average A level resultper entry, DfE grade
above average
Hertfordshire C+ · England C+
B-
Best three A levelsthe grade a typical offer asks for
9%
AAB or betterat least two in facilitating subjects
in line with average
Hertfordshire 13% · England 12.8%
95%
Stayed the coursefinished what they started
in line with average
Hertfordshire 97.3% · England 95.7%
Applied general qualifications: average result Merit, 6 students. These are BTECs and similar, graded pass to distinction* rather than A* to E, so the two cannot be compared directly.
A level results by subject
2024/25 · share reaching B or above
After sixth form
Of the 110 students who finished, 64.5% went on to higher education, 4.5% to an apprenticeship, and 25.5% into work. 94.5% were in a sustained destination of some kind six months later.
Destinations are for 2022/23 leavers, the most recent DfE has published. The results above are 2024/25.
What these mean
- Attainment 8
- The average pupil's total score across eight GCSE-equivalent subjects, with English and maths counting double. It is scored out of 90. A score of 50 is roughly equivalent to achieving a grade 5 across eight subjects.
- Grades 4 and 5
- GCSEs are graded from 9 down to 1. Grade 4 is a standard pass and broadly corresponds to the old grade C; grade 5 is what the government calls a strong pass. Grade 7 is broadly equivalent to an old grade A.
- The EBacc
- A combination of subjects rather than a qualification in its own right: English, Maths, the Sciences, a Language, and History or Geography. The figure shows the share of pupils entered for all the EBacc subject areas, so it gives an indication of how widely a school enters pupils for this particular combination of subjects.
- Progress 8
- A measure of how much progress pupils make between the end of primary school and the end of GCSE, rather than simply what grades they achieve. It takes pupils' prior attainment into account, making it useful for comparing schools with different intakes. Progress 8 is not published for 2024/25 because the pupils concerned did not have Key Stage 2 tests that can be used as the normal starting point.
- Percentage points
- The gap between two percentages. A subject going from 30% to 36% has risen six percentage points, though it has risen by a fifth. We write "pp" to keep the two apart.
- Why some subjects say nothing
- A year group is small. Where a gap is no bigger than the swing a different intake would produce, we say the subjects are level rather than dressing chance as a finding. Two kinds of subject carry no share at all: a vocational award has no 9-to-1 grade to report, and some qualifications are not published on the 9-to-1 scale for a given year group, most often community languages sat outside the school's own timetable.
- Persistent absence
- The share of pupils who miss at least 10% of their possible sessions during the school year. This includes both authorised and unauthorised absence, so illness and other authorised reasons are included. Persistent absence has remained substantially higher than its pre-pandemic level.
- Spare places
- The amount of available capacity a school has compared with the number of pupils on roll. This is different from oversubscription: spare places measure whether a school has capacity, whereas oversubscription describes demand for places exceeding the number available. A school with no spare places may be popular, but a small school can also be full without receiving a large number of applications.
- Grades not published
- Where a subject was sat by only a few students, the Department for Education publishes how many entered and withholds the grades, so that individual students cannot be identified from the figures. The subject is shown, because the school does teach it, but there is nothing to compare. Most A level groups are small enough for this to apply somewhere on a page.
- Average A-level grade
- The average grade achieved across students' A-level entries. This is different from measures such as the proportion achieving AAB or better in two or more facilitating subjects, which are sometimes used to indicate higher attainment and university-entry performance.
School details
Chesham Road
Berkhamsted
Hertfordshire
HP4 3AH
- Headteacher
- Mr James Shapland
- Pupils
- 1,561 of 1,557 places
- Spare places
- 2%
- Free school meals
- 12%
- SEND
- 15% on SEN support, 2% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 34% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last +0.36 in 2023/24
Other schools in Hertfordshire
79 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- John F Kennedy Catholic School 4.4 km
- Laureate Academy 5.6 km
- The Hemel Hempstead School 5.9 km
- The Adeyfield Academy 7.9 km
- Tring School 8 km
- Kings Langley School 8.1 km
- The Astley Cooper School 8.4 km
- Longdean School 8.4 km
- St Clement Danes School 10.6 km
- Parmiter's School 13.3 km
- Future Academies Watford 13.4 km
- Saint Michael's Catholic High School 13.7 km
- The Reach Free School 14 km
- Rickmansworth School 14.2 km
- Saint Joan of Arc Catholic School 14.3 km
- Croxley Danes School 14.4 km
- The Marlborough Science Academy 14.9 km
- Watford Grammar School for Boys 15 km
- Roundwood Park School 15.1 km
- Townsend Church of England School 15.4 km
- Westfield Academy 15.6 km
- Watford Grammar School for Girls 16.1 km
- St Albans Girls' School 16.1 km
- Loreto College 16.2 km
- St George's School 16.4 km
- Sir John Lawes School 16.9 km
- Queens' School 17.1 km
- Verulam School 17.1 km
- Samuel Ryder Academy 17.5 km
- Sandringham School 17.7 km
- Katherine Warington School 17.7 km
- The Grange Academy 17.9 km
- Beaumont School 18.2 km
- Bushey Meads School 18.8 km
- Nicholas Breakspear Catholic School 19 km
- Hertswood Academy 22.7 km
- Yavneh College 23.2 km
- Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School 23.3 km
- Elstree Screen Arts Academy 23.3 km
- Onslow St Audrey's School 23.7 km
- Stanborough School 24.1 km
- Monk's Walk School 25.4 km
- Dame Alice Owen's School 25.6 km
- Chancellor's School 26.4 km
- Gracewood Academy 26.8 km
- Ridgeway Academy 27 km
- Hitchin Boys' School 29.5 km
- Hitchin Girls' School 29.6 km
- The Priory School 30.2 km
- The Saint John Henry Newman Catholic School 30.4 km
- The Thomas Alleyne Academy 30.4 km
- Barclay Academy 30.7 km
- Barnwell School 30.9 km
- Marriotts School 31.5 km
- The Sele School 32.1 km
- The Nobel School 32.4 km
- The Highfield School 32.6 km
- Fearnhill School 33 km
- Richard Hale School 33.8 km
- Simon Balle All-Through School 34.3 km
- Goffs Academy 35.3 km
- St Mary's Church of England High School (VA) 35.6 km
- Goffs - Churchgate Academy 36.2 km
- The Chauncy School 36.3 km
- The Knights Templar School 36.6 km
- Presdales School 37.1 km
- The Broxbourne School 37.2 km
- Haileybury Turnford 37.3 km
- Robert Barclay Academy 37.6 km
- The John Warner School 38.8 km
- Freman College 42.9 km
- Leventhorpe 49.6 km
- The Bishop's Stortford High School 50.5 km
- King James Academy Royston 50.6 km
- St Mary's Catholic School 51 km
- Avanti Grange Secondary School 51.3 km
- The Hertfordshire & Essex High School and Science College 52.1 km
- Hockerill Anglo-European College 52.2 km
- Birchwood High School 53 km