Barnwell School
Secondary · Stevenage · SG2 9SW
Report-card inspection (current system, from November 2025)
The headline grade shown is the Achievement area of the school's report card.
Inspected 6 January 2026 · report published 28 May 2026
Read the Ofsted report ↗At a glance
1,270 pupils · 80% of 1,590 capacity
- School type
- Foundation school
- Age range
- 11–18
- Gender
- Mixed
- Admissions
- Non-selective
- Free school meals
- 31.3% of pupils
- English as additional language
- 14.5% of pupils
- SEN support
- 18.1% of pupils
- EHC plan
- 4.6% of pupils
- Sixth form
- Yes
- URN
- 117518
Admissions demand: Year 7 entry, September 2026
0.48 first-choice applications per place195 places offered · 94 first-choice applications · usually has places
First-choice applications per place, by entry year
Applications and offers on national offer day, DfE. A ratio above 1.00 means more families named this school first choice than there were places.
Admissions cutoff distance: Year 7
Last child offered a place under the distance criterion (2026 entry) lived within 4495.56 m (≈2.79 mi)
measured in a straight line.
Cutoff distance by entry year
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Cutoff distances as published by the local authority (source). Siblings and other priority groups are offered places first; cutoffs move year to year.
GCSE results (2024/2025)
206 pupils at the end of key stage 4 in 2024/2025
Progress 8 is suspended nationally for 2024/25 and 2025/26. These cohorts sat no key stage 2 tests (COVID), so there is no baseline to measure progress from.
A-level results (2024/2025)
Source: DfE performance tables 2024/2025. “Suppressed” means the DfE withholds figures for very small cohorts.
Attendance (2025/26 autumn term)
Autumn-term absence, DfE pupil absence data. Lower is better.
Staffing
Full-time-equivalent, 2025/26.
Teacher retention (2024/25)
87% of teachers stayed at the school the following year · 9% moved to another state school · 4% left the state-funded sector
School Workforce Census, DfE. The ratio counts full-time-equivalent qualified teachers; retention follows teachers in post one November to the next. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Spending per pupil
Total expenditure ÷ pupils, council-maintained school finance return (DfE Schools Financial Benchmarking, latest year). Higher spending is not a measure of quality. It often reflects greater pupil need or a smaller school. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Where pupils go after GCSEs
Where students go after sixth form
Destinations measured the year after leaving, latest DfE destination measures release.
Inspection history since 2015
- 6 January 2026: Needs attention
- 24 November 2021: Good
- 23 February 2021: Requires Improvement monitoring Visit 2
- 9 May 2019: Taking effective action to tackle the areas requiring improvement
- 17 January 2018: Requires improvement
- 19 January 2016: Requires improvement
Ofsted management information. Ungraded and monitoring visits do not award a new grade. How the two inspection systems work.