Beccles High School
Free school · ages 11–16 · no sixth form
Below average on every headline measure — 42nd of 42 for average grade in Suffolk.
Beccles · Suffolk · one of 42 state secondaries
Summary
Beccles High School sits 42nd of 42 state secondaries in Suffolk for average GCSE grade. 31.3% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 60.7% across Suffolk. 17.9% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject only combined science and history sits measurably behind Suffolk. Ofsted: Requires improvement in February 2024.
It is a free school of 182 pupils, taking ages 11 to 16. 50% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, a high share by national standards, and 16.4% are on SEN support with a further 7.5% holding an education, health and care plan. 10.4% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 26.8% entered across Suffolk, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 22.4% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 39.8% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, worse than the 22.4% across Suffolk, and 76.6% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Suffolk, 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·Suffolk
Inspection
Requires improvement
Inspected February 2024
- Behaviour and attitudes
- Requires improvement
- Leadership and management
- Requires improvement
- Personal development
- Requires improvement
- Quality of education
- Requires improvement
- February 2024 Full inspection Requires improvement
That grade was given under the framework that ran from September 2019 to 2024, when Ofsted still issued one overall grade.
Attendance
40% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 22% across Suffolk and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
10%
Entered for the EBacc the academic core of subjects
well below average
Suffolk 27% · England 41%
After Year 11
77% stayed in education (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.
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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
Castle Hill
Beccles
Suffolk
NR34 7BQ
- Head
- Mr Christopher Barns
- Trust
- Sapientia Education Trust
- Pupils
- 182 of 402 places
- Spare places
- 45%
- Free school meals
- 50%
- SEND
- 16% on SEN support, 8% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 22% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last -1.15 in 2023/24
Other schools in Suffolk
41 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- Sir John Leman High School 1 km
- Bungay High School 8.8 km
- Pakefield High School 10.3 km
- East Point Academy 10.7 km
- Benjamin Britten Academy of Music and Mathematics 11.8 km
- Ormiston Denes Academy 12.6 km
- Stradbroke High School 25.4 km
- Alde Valley Academy 27.6 km
- Thomas Mills High School & Sixth Form 29.9 km
- Hartismere School 32.9 km
- Debenham High School 37.2 km
- Farlingaye High School 43.1 km
- Stowupland High School 46.7 km
- Kesgrave High School 48.2 km
- Claydon High School 49.4 km
- Stowmarket High School 49.6 km
- Northgate High School 49.9 km
- St Alban's Catholic High School 50.1 km
- Ormiston Endeavour Academy 50.3 km
- Copleston High School 51.1 km
- Ixworth High School 52.4 km
- Ipswich Academy 53.7 km
- Stoke High School - Ormiston Academy 53.8 km
- Chantry Academy 54.3 km
- Felixstowe School 55.6 km
- Thurston Community College 56.3 km
- Holbrook Academy 58.7 km
- Sybil Andrews Academy 59.9 km
- Hadleigh High School 61.5 km
- St Benedict's Catholic School 62.9 km
- Bury St Edmunds County High School 63 km
- King Edward VI CEVC School 63.1 km
- East Bergholt High School 64.4 km
- Breckland School 65.8 km
- Mildenhall College Academy 72.1 km
- Ormiston Sudbury Academy 72.7 km
- Thomas Gainsborough School 73.2 km
- Stour Valley Community School 78.6 km
- Newmarket Academy 83 km
- Samuel Ward Academy 86.5 km
- Castle Manor Academy 87.9 km