Mulberry Academy St Leonards

Academy · ages 11–16 · no sixth form

Below average on every headline measure — 26th of 26 for average grade in East Sussex.

St Leonards-on-Sea · East Sussex · one of 26 state secondaries

Summary

Mulberry Academy St Leonards sits 26th of 26 state secondaries in East Sussex for average GCSE grade. 44.4% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 63.3% across East Sussex. 25.3% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject only maths and English Language sits measurably behind East Sussex. Ofsted: Inspected in January 2025, after Ofsted stopped issuing a single overall grade.

It is an academy, taking ages 11 to 16. 8.9% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 36.8% entered across East Sussex, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 18.7% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 84% of its leavers went on to further education.

Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against East Sussex, 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·East Sussex

Inspection

Placed in special measures

Graded by area

Inspected January 2025

Behaviour and attitudes: Inadequate
Leadership and management: Inadequate
Personal development: Inadequate
Quality of education: Inadequate

January 2025 Full inspection

Ofsted stopped issuing a single overall grade in September 2024.

Read the Ofsted report

GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25

Mulberry Academy St Leonards converted to an academy in March 2026 and was given a new reference number. The Department for Education files results against the record a school held when its pupils sat their exams, so these are published under its previous one, The St Leonards Academy.

Attainment

44%

Passed English & maths grade 4+, an old grade C

well below average

East Sussex 63% · England 65%

25%

Strong pass in both grade 5+, a strong pass

well below average

East Sussex 42% · England 45%

33.2

Average grade across 8 Attainment 8, out of 90

below average

East Sussex 43.1 · England 46.1

Entered for the EBacc the academic core of subjects

well below average

East Sussex 37% · England 41%

After Year 11

84% 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

this school East Sussex England at grade 4

Subject Share at grade 4 or above Since 2021/22

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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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.

School details

Edinburgh Road
St Leonards-on-Sea
East Sussex
TN38 8HH

01424 448740 mulberrystleonards.org

Head: Mr Jon Francies
Trust: Mulberry Schools Trust
SEND: 4% on SEN support, 4% with an EHC plan
Separate sciences: 19% of the year
Progress 8: Not published · last -1.22 in 2023/24

Other schools in East Sussex

25 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.

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