Cheshire Studio School
Free school · ages 14–19 · with a sixth form
Below average on every headline measure — 23rd of 23 for average grade in Cheshire East.
Crewe · Cheshire East · one of 23 state secondaries
Summary
Cheshire Studio School sits 23rd of 23 state secondaries in Cheshire East for average GCSE grade. 27.3% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 67.8% across Cheshire East. 0% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject only English Literature and combined science sits measurably behind Cheshire East. Ofsted: Good in March 2017, confirmed in March 2023.
It is a free school, taking ages 14 to 19 and running its own sixth form. 0% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, a low share, and 54.5% are on SEN support with a further 9.1% holding an education, health and care plan. 0% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 38.9% entered across Cheshire East, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push. 40.9% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, worse than the 19.2% across Cheshire East, and 62.5% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Cheshire East, 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·Cheshire East
Inspection
Good
Last inspected March 2023
The grade itself is 9 years old.
- March 2023 Ungraded inspection School remains Good
- March 2017 Full inspection Good
An ungraded inspection checks whether the existing grade still holds rather than replacing it.
That grade was given under the framework Ofsted used before September 2019.
Attendance
41% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 19% across Cheshire East and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
27%
Passed English & maths grade 4+, an old grade C
well below average
Cheshire East 68% · England 65%
0%
Entered for the EBacc the academic core of subjects
well below average
Cheshire East 39% · England 41%
After Year 11
63% stayed in education, 4% 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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Sixth form · Key stage 5·2024/25
Sixth form
2024/25 · 24 A level students
D+
Average A level resultper entry, DfE grade
below average
Cheshire East C+ · England C+
Applied general qualifications: average result Merit+, 34 students, 96.9% stayed the course. 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 38 students who finished, 36.8% went on to higher education, 15.8% to an apprenticeship, and 34.2% into work. 86.8% 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
West Street
C/O the Learning Partnership, Crewe Utc
Crewe
Cheshire
CW1 2PZ
- Head
- Mr Daniel Thomas
- Trust
- The Learning Partnership Academies Trust
- Spare places
- 27%
- Free school meals
- 0%
- SEND
- 55% on SEN support, 9% with an EHC plan
- Progress 8
- Not published · last -1.62 in 2023/24
Other schools in Cheshire East
22 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- Crewe Engineering and Design UTC 0 km
- Sir William Stanier School 0.9 km
- Ruskin Community High School 1.2 km
- The Oaks Academy 1.4 km
- St Thomas More Catholic High School 1.9 km
- Shavington Academy 3.9 km
- Sandbach School 6.7 km
- Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College 6.8 km
- Brine Leas School 6.9 km
- Malbank School and Sixth Form College 7.1 km
- Alsager School 8.3 km
- Middlewich High School 9.9 km
- Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School 11.7 km
- Congleton High School 14.8 km
- Eaton Bank Academy 18 km
- Knutsford Academy 22.6 km
- The Macclesfield Academy 26.3 km
- The Fallibroome Academy 26.5 km
- All Hallows Catholic College 26.5 km
- Tytherington School 28.2 km
- Wilmslow High School 28.4 km
- Poynton High School 34.8 km