Hylands School
Academy · ages 11–18 · with a sixth form
Below average on 1 of the four headline measures — 66th of 79 for average grade in Essex.
Chelmsford · Essex · one of 81 state secondaries
Summary
Hylands School sits 66th of 79 state secondaries in Essex for average GCSE grade. 54.4% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 63.7% across Essex. 37.8% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject only English Language and English Literature sits measurably behind Essex. Ofsted: Inspected in February 2026 under the current report card, which grades 7 areas separately and gives no overall word.
It is an academy of 614 pupils, taking ages 11 to 18 and running its own sixth form. 45.2% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, a high share by national standards, and 17.8% are on SEN support with a further 4.4% holding an education, health and care plan. 3.3% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 38.8% entered across Essex, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 20% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 30.2% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, worse than the 21.1% across Essex, and 79.1% 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
Placed in special measures
Graded by area
Last inspected February 2026
- Achievement
- Urgent improvement
- Attendance and behaviour
- Needs attention
- Curriculum and teaching
- Urgent improvement
- Inclusion
- Urgent improvement
- Leadership and management
- Urgent improvement
- Personal development
- Needs attention
- Safeguarding
- Met
- February 2026 Report card inspection Graded by area
- June 2023 Full inspection Requires improvement
Ofsted’s current report card grades each area separately and gives no overall word.
Attendance
30% 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
79% stayed in education, 1% 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 · 7 A level students
Ofsted rated sixth-form provision Good at the last inspection
67%
Stayed the coursefinished what they started
below average
Essex 95.5% · England 95.7%
A level results by subject
2024/25 · share reaching B or above
After sixth form
Of the 3 students who finished, 35.7% went on to higher education, 5.4% to an apprenticeship, and 39.3% into work. 82.1% 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
Chelmsford Road
Writtle
Chelmsford
Essex
CM1 3ET
- Headteacher
- Mr Christopher White
- Trust
- The Kemnal Academies Trust
- Pupils
- 614 of 1,104 places
- Spare places
- 43%
- Free school meals
- 45%
- SEND
- 18% on SEN support, 4% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 20% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last -0.86 in 2023/24
Other schools in Essex
80 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
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