Astrea Academy Dearne
Academy · ages 11–16 · no sixth form
Below average on 1 of the four headline measures — 9th of 10 for average grade in Barnsley.
Rotherham · Barnsley · one of 11 state secondaries
Summary
Astrea Academy Dearne sits 9th of 10 state secondaries in Barnsley for average GCSE grade. 57.9% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 63.8% across Barnsley. 40% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject only history and geography sits measurably behind Barnsley. Ofsted: Good in May 2023.
It is an academy of 1,071 pupils, taking ages 11 to 16. 45.6% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, a high share by national standards, and 9.7% are on SEN support with a further 3.6% holding an education, health and care plan. 20% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 35.7% entered across Barnsley, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 6.2% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 38.5% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, worse than the 24.6% across Barnsley, and 75.6% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Barnsley, 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·Barnsley
Inspection
Good
Inspected May 2023
- Behaviour and attitudes
- Requires improvement
- Leadership and management
- Good
- Personal development
- Good
- Quality of education
- Good
- May 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
38% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 25% across Barnsley and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
20%
Entered for the EBacc the academic core of subjects
well below average
Barnsley 36% · England 41%
After Year 11
76% stayed in education, 5% 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.
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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.
School details
Goldthorpe Road
Goldthorpe
Rotherham
South Yorkshire
S63 9EW
- Principal
- Mrs Emma Glover
- Trust
- Astrea Academy Trust
- Pupils
- 1,071 of 1,200 places
- Spare places
- 9%
- Free school meals
- 46%
- SEND
- 10% on SEN support, 4% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 6% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last -0.67 in 2023/24
Other schools in Barnsley
10 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- Netherwood Academy 6.1 km
- Outwood Academy Shafton 9.2 km
- Barnsley Academy 9.8 km
- Kirk Balk Academy 10 km
- Outwood Academy Carlton 11.5 km
- Holy Trinity Catholic and Church of England School 11.5 km
- Trinity Academy St. Edwards 12.9 km
- Horizon Community College 13.4 km
- Darton Academy 17.1 km
- Penistone Grammar School 21.9 km