St John Fisher Catholic College
Academy · ages 11–18 · Catholic · with a sixth form
Below average on 1 of the four headline measures — 35th of 55 for average grade in Staffordshire.
Newcastle Under Lyme · Staffordshire · one of 56 state secondaries
Summary
St John Fisher Catholic College sits 35th of 55 state secondaries in Staffordshire for average GCSE grade. 57.6% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 61.9% across Staffordshire. 34.8% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject it is furthest clear of Staffordshire in biology, sat by 13% of the year, and physics, sat by 12% of the year,, and furthest behind in English Language and English Literature. Ofsted: Requires improvement in December 2023.
It is an academy of 1,075 pupils, taking ages 11 to 18 and running its own sixth form. 22.5% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, and 14.6% are on SEN support with a further 1.5% holding an education, health and care plan. 12.6% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 33.2% entered across Staffordshire, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 12.1% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 16.5% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, better than the 21.7% across Staffordshire, and 85.4% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Staffordshire, 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·Staffordshire
Inspection
Requires improvement
Last inspected December 2023
- Behaviour and attitudes
- Requires improvement
- Leadership and management
- Requires improvement
- Personal development
- Good
- Quality of education
- Requires improvement
- December 2023 Full inspection Requires improvement
- June 2022 Ungraded inspection School remains Good (Concerns)
An ungraded inspection checks whether the existing grade still holds rather than replacing it.
That grade was given under the framework that ran from September 2019 to 2024, when Ofsted still issued one overall grade.
Attendance
16% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 22% across Staffordshire and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
58%
Passed English & maths grade 4+, an old grade C
in line with average
Staffordshire 62% · England 65%
35%
Strong pass in both grade 5+, a strong pass
in line with average
Staffordshire 40% · England 45%
41.8
Average grade across 8 Attainment 8, out of 90
in line with average
Staffordshire 43.9 · England 46.1
13%
Entered for the EBacc the academic core of subjects
well below average
Staffordshire 33% · England 41%
After Year 11
85% stayed in education, 3% 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.
English Language is the subject most of this year group sat. English Language 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 · 40 A level students
Ofsted rated sixth-form provision Good at the last inspection
13%
AAB or betterat least two in facilitating subjects
in line with average
Staffordshire 12.5% · England 12.8%
95%
Stayed the coursefinished what they started
in line with average
Staffordshire 94.9% · England 95.7%
Applied general qualifications: average result Merit-, 10 students, 87.5% 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 73 students who finished, 63% went on to higher education, 2.7% to an apprenticeship, and 17.8% into work. 87.7% 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
Ashfields New Road
Newcastle Under Lyme
Staffordshire
ST5 2SJ
- Headteacher
- Mr Garrett Murray
- Trust
- ST Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Multi-academy Trust
- Pupils
- 1,075 of 1,048 places
- Spare places
- None
- Free school meals
- 23%
- SEND
- 15% on SEN support, 2% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 12% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last -0.4 in 2023/24
Other schools in Staffordshire
55 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- The Orme Academy 1.5 km
- Newcastle Academy 1.6 km
- Chesterton Community Sports College 2.8 km
- Clayton Hall Academy 3.2 km
- Sir Thomas Boughey Academy 5.4 km
- Madeley High School 7.1 km
- The King's CofE Academy 7.7 km
- Kidsgrove Secondary School 8.7 km
- Endon High School 10.2 km
- Biddulph High School 10.8 km
- Moorside High School 11 km
- Blythe Bridge High School 12.8 km
- Alleyne's Academy 13.3 km
- Westwood College 15.7 km
- The Cheadle Academy 16.7 km
- Painsley Catholic College 16.8 km
- Leek High School 18.2 km
- Sir Graham Balfour High School 22.1 km
- The Weston Road Academy 24.9 km
- Blessed William Howard Catholic School 25.2 km
- King Edward VI High School 25.5 km
- The JCB Academy 27.6 km
- Walton High School 27.8 km
- Thomas Alleyne's High School 28 km
- Wolgarston High School 33.9 km
- The Hart School 34.4 km
- The Rural Enterprise Academy 35.8 km
- Rugeley John Taylor 36.3 km
- Staffordshire University Academy 36.9 km
- Cardinal Griffin Catholic College 37.9 km
- Kingsmead School 38.4 km
- Cannock Chase High School 38.5 km
- Great Wyrley Academy 41.5 km
- Cheslyn Hay Academy 41.5 km
- Norton Canes High School 41.6 km
- Chase Terrace Academy 42.2 km
- Codsall Community High School 43.5 km
- Erasmus Darwin Academy 43.6 km
- The Friary School 44.2 km
- John Taylor High School 44.4 km
- John Taylor Free School 44.4 km
- The de Ferrers Academy 44.9 km
- Nether Stowe School 45.6 km
- Paget High School 46.4 km
- King Edward VI School 46.9 km
- Abbot Beyne School 47.6 km
- Paulet High School 48.6 km
- Blessed Robert Sutton Catholic Voluntary Academy 48.8 km
- Wombourne High School 53.5 km
- Lift Rawlett 54 km
- Landau Forte Academy, QEMS 55.4 km
- Landau Forte Academy, Amington 57.5 km
- Lift Tamworth 58.5 km
- The Wilnecote School 59.6 km
- Kinver High School and Sixth Form 62.6 km