Avon Valley Academy
Academy · ages 11–16 · no sixth form
Below average on every headline measure — 26th of 28 for average grade in Wiltshire.
Salisbury · Wiltshire · one of 28 state secondaries
Summary
Avon Valley Academy sits 26th of 28 state secondaries in Wiltshire for average GCSE grade. 45.5% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 65.4% across Wiltshire. 18.2% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject only business studies and combined science sits measurably behind Wiltshire. Ofsted: Inspected in July 2025, after Ofsted stopped issuing a single overall grade.
It is an academy of 517 pupils, taking ages 11 to 16. 24.9% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, and 13% are on SEN support with a further 1.3% holding an education, health and care plan. 13% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 30.8% entered across Wiltshire, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 18.2% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 26.2% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, worse than the 21.6% across Wiltshire, and 75.8% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Wiltshire, 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·Wiltshire
Inspection
Graded by area
Inspected July 2025
- Behaviour and attitudes
- Good
- Leadership and management
- Good
- Personal development
- Good
- Quality of education
- Good
- July 2025 Full inspection
Ofsted stopped issuing a single overall grade in September 2024.
Attendance
26% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 22% across Wiltshire and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
13%
Entered for the EBacc the academic core of subjects
well below average
Wiltshire 31% · England 41%
After Year 11
76% stayed in education, 2% 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.
English Language is the subject most of this year group sat. English Language 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.
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
Recreation Road
Durrington
Salisbury
Wiltshire
SP4 8HH
- Principal
- Mrs Shelly Tuke
- Trust
- Acorn Education Trust
- Pupils
- 517 of 1,145 places
- Spare places
- 55%
- Free school meals
- 25%
- SEND
- 13% on SEN support, 1% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 18% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last -0.18 in 2023/24
Other schools in Wiltshire
27 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- The Stonehenge School 2.9 km
- The Wellington Academy 10.7 km
- St Joseph's Catholic School 13.3 km
- Wyvern St Edmund's Academy 13.4 km
- Sarum Academy 13.5 km
- South Wilts Grammar School 13.6 km
- Bishop Wordsworth's Church of England Grammar School 15.1 km
- Pewsey Vale School 15.5 km
- Lavington School 18 km
- Devizes School 22.5 km
- The Trafalgar School at Downton 23.4 km
- St John's Marlborough 24 km
- Kingdown School 27.4 km
- Matravers School 29.8 km
- Kingsbury Green Academy 30.1 km
- Melksham Oak Community School 30.1 km
- The Clarendon Academy 33.5 km
- St Augustine's Catholic College 33.9 km
- The John of Gaunt School 33.9 km
- Abbeyfield School 35.8 km
- St Laurence School 37.9 km
- The Corsham School 38.9 km
- Sheldon School 38.9 km
- Hardenhuish School 39.1 km
- Royal Wootton Bassett Academy 39.7 km
- Bradon Forest School 43.4 km
- Malmesbury School 48.9 km