Colchester County High School for Girls
Academy · ages 11–18 · girls · selective · with a sixth form
Above average on every headline measure — 4th of 79 for average grade in Essex.
Colchester · Essex · one of 81 state secondaries
Summary
Colchester County High School for Girls sits 4th of 79 state secondaries in Essex for average GCSE grade. 100% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 63.7% across Essex. 100% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject it is furthest clear of Essex in geography and history, with nothing measurably behind. Ofsted: Outstanding in November 2023.
It is a selective girls academy of 1,198 pupils, taking ages 11 to 18 and running its own sixth form. 2.5% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, a low share, and 0.5% are on SEN support with a further 0% holding an education, health and care plan. 91.1% were entered for the full EBacc, more than the 38.8% entered across Essex, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 99.5% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 5.4% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, better than the 21.1% across Essex, and 100% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Essex, 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·Essex
Inspection
Outstanding
Inspected November 2023
- Behaviour and attitudes
- Outstanding
- Leadership and management
- Outstanding
- Personal development
- Outstanding
- Quality of education
- Outstanding
- November 2023 Full inspection Outstanding
That grade was given under the framework that ran from September 2019 to 2024, when Ofsted still issued one overall grade.
Attendance
5% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 21% across Essex and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
After Year 11
100% 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.
Chemistry is the subject most of this year group sat. Chemistry 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 · 125 A level students
Ofsted rated sixth-form provision Outstanding at the last inspection
A-
Average A level resultper entry, DfE grade
above average
Essex C+ · England C+
A-
Best three A levelsthe grade a typical offer asks for
44%
AAB or betterat least two in facilitating subjects
above average
Essex 10.8% · England 12.8%
98%
Stayed the coursefinished what they started
in line with average
Essex 95.5% · England 95.7%
A level results by subject
2024/25 · share reaching B or above
After sixth form
Of the 126 students who finished, 74.6% went on to higher education, 0.8% to an apprenticeship, and 11.1% into work. 86.5% 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
Norman Way
Colchester
Essex
CO3 3US
- Headteacher
- Mrs Gillian Marshall
- Trust
- Alpha Trust
- Pupils
- 1,198 of 1,260 places
- Spare places
- 4%
- Free school meals
- 3%
- SEND
- 1% on SEN support, 0% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 100% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last +0.99 in 2023/24
Other schools in Essex
80 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- St Benedict's Catholic College 0 km
- Philip Morant School and College 0.5 km
- Colchester Royal Grammar School 0.8 km
- St Helena School 1.4 km
- Paxman Academy 1.5 km
- The Stanway School 2.4 km
- The Thomas Lord Audley School 2.6 km
- Colchester Academy 4.5 km
- The Gilberd School 4.5 km
- The Trinity School 4.5 km
- Thurstable School 11.4 km
- Colne Community School 12.3 km
- Honywood School 12.8 km
- Manningtree High School 13.8 km
- The Ramsey Academy, Halstead 17.2 km
- Lift New Rickstones 18.1 km
- Lift Maltings 19.3 km
- Alec Hunter Academy 20.6 km
- Lift Clacton 20.7 km
- Clacton County High School 22 km
- Plume School 22.1 km
- Notley High School and Braintree Sixth Form 22.4 km
- Hedingham School and Sixth Form 22.6 km
- Tabor Academy 23 km
- Lift Tendring 26.3 km
- Harwich and Dovercourt High School 27 km
- Ormiston Rivers Academy 27.9 km
- The Beaulieu Park School 29.4 km
- The Boswells School 30.5 km
- Chelmer Valley High School 30.8 km
- The Sandon School 31 km
- William de Ferrers School 31.9 km
- St John Payne Catholic School, Chelmsford 32 km
- Chelmsford County High School for Girls 32.1 km
- King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford 32.5 km
- Great Baddow High School 32.9 km
- Moulsham High School 33.4 km
- Lift Greensward 34.2 km
- The King Edmund School 34.3 km
- Hylands School 34.6 km
- Helena Romanes School 35.8 km
- The Sweyne Park School 37.4 km
- The FitzWimarc School 37.4 km
- Beauchamps High School 38 km
- The Bromfords School 40.1 km
- The Deanes 40.1 km
- Mayflower High School 41 km
- Anglo European School 41.1 km
- The King John School 41.4 km
- The Appleton School 42.1 km
- The Billericay School 43.2 km
- The Basildon Upper Academy 43.5 km
- The Basildon Lower Academy 43.7 km
- De La Salle School 44.1 km
- Castle View School 44.9 km
- The Cornelius Vermuyden School 45 km
- Woodlands School 45.8 km
- Forest Hall School 45.8 km
- The James Hornsby School 46 km
- Saffron Walden County High School 46.5 km
- Shenfield High School 46.5 km
- St Martin's School Brentwood 46.8 km
- Joyce Frankland Academy, Newport 46.8 km
- The Ongar Academy 47 km
- Becket Keys Church of England Free School 48.8 km
- Brentwood County High School 49.2 km
- Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School 49.3 km
- Mark Hall Academy 52.5 km
- Passmores Academy 53.6 km
- Burnt Mill Academy 54.1 km
- St Mark's West Essex Catholic School 54.7 km
- Bmat Stem Academy 54.9 km
- Sir Frederick Gibberd College 55.2 km
- Stewards Academy - Science Specialist, Harlow 55.8 km
- Epping St John's Church of England School 57.4 km
- Debden Park High School 59.8 km
- Davenant Foundation School 59.8 km
- Roding Valley High School 62.5 km
- King Harold Business & Enterprise Academy 63 km
- West Hatch High School 63.6 km