Woodchurch High School
Academy · ages 11–16 · Church of England · no sixth form
Below average on 3 of the four headline measures — 14th of 20 for average grade in Wirral.
Wirral · Wirral · one of 20 state secondaries
Summary
Woodchurch High School sits 14th of 20 state secondaries in Wirral for average GCSE grade. 51.6% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 62% across Wirral. 27.8% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject it is furthest clear of Wirral in statistics, sat by 4% of the year, and physics, sat by 9% of the year,, and furthest behind in religious studies and maths. Ofsted: Inspected in June 2025, after Ofsted stopped issuing a single overall grade.
It is an academy of 1,399 pupils, taking ages 11 to 16. 43% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, a high share by national standards, and 24.6% are on SEN support with a further 4.3% holding an education, health and care plan. 43.8% were entered for the full EBacc, more than the 38.8% entered across Wirral, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 8.9% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 29% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, worse than the 25.5% across Wirral, and 80.4% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Wirral, 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·Wirral
Inspection
Graded by area
Last inspected June 2025
- Behaviour and attitudes
- Good
- Leadership and management
- Good
- Personal development
- Good
- Quality of education
- Good
- June 2025 Full inspection
- February 2020 Ungraded inspection School remains Good
An ungraded inspection checks whether the existing grade still holds rather than replacing it.
Ofsted stopped issuing a single overall grade in September 2024.
Attendance
29% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 26% across Wirral and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
44%
Entered for the EBacc the academic core of subjects
in line with average
Wirral 39% · England 41%
After Year 11
80% 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.
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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.
- 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.
School details
Carr Bridge Road
Woodchurch
Wirral
Merseyside
CH49 7NG
- Headteacher
- Mr Martyn Canham
- Trust
- Woodchurch High School
- Pupils
- 1,399 of 1,405 places
- Spare places
- 0%
- Free school meals
- 43%
- SEND
- 25% on SEN support, 4% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 9% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last -0.09 in 2023/24
Other schools in Wirral
19 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- Ridgeway High School 0.6 km
- Upton Hall School FCJ 1.9 km
- Birkenhead High School Academy 2.2 km
- St Anselm's College 2.4 km
- Birkenhead Park School 2.8 km
- Prenton High School for Girls 3.4 km
- Pensby High School 4.4 km
- Weatherhead High School 4.5 km
- The Mosslands School 4.8 km
- Co-op Academy Bebington 4.8 km
- St John Plessington Catholic College 4.9 km
- Wirral Grammar School for Girls 5.1 km
- Wirral Grammar School for Boys 5.2 km
- St Mary's Catholic College, A Voluntary Academy 5.4 km
- The Oldershaw School 5.5 km
- Hilbre High School 5.7 km
- Calday Grange Grammar School 5.8 km
- West Kirby Grammar School 7.3 km
- South Wirral High School 9.6 km