The School Record

Published admissions and inspection figures for schools in England, from the DfE, Ofsted and local authorities.

Blacon High School, A Specialist Sports College

URN 111396 · Secondary · Foundation school · Cheshire West and Chester

Melbourne Road, Chester, CH1 5JH

Figures current as of 5 September 2026, the day we last checked a source behind this page.

How many families applied

Preferences expressed and offers made at Year 7, as published by the Department for Education. These describe demand. They do not indicate whether any particular child would be offered a place.

In the 2025 intake, 118 families named Blacon High School, A Specialist Sports College as their first preference, and the school made 118 offers.

That is 1.00 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 59% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 59% of comparable schools position among schools in England admitting at Year 7, 2025 intake

Little change. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 1.04 in 2021–2022 and 1.0 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 12 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 118 145 118 1.00
2024 111 136 112 0.99
2023 150 176 146 1.03
2022 162 185 150 1.08
2021 134 157 135 0.99
2020 148 173 145 1.02
2019 147 178 149 0.99
2018 133 156 124 1.07
2017 110 126 112 0.98
2016 100 113 105 0.95
2015 79 86 82 0.96
2014 54 69 55 0.98

“Offers made” counts the offers the school made. It is not the number of places the school had, so please do not read it as one.

Source: Department for Education: school-level applications and offers, checked 4 September 2026. All sources.

Ofsted

Ofsted changed its inspection framework: the current one publishes several graded areas and no single overall grade, while the previous one published an overall effectiveness grade. Each inspection below states which framework produced it.

Ofsted inspections from 2023 to 202620232026

Ofsted report card (current framework), 12 May 2026

Safeguarding: Met

Inclusion: Needs attention

Curriculum and teaching: Needs attention

Achievement: Needs attention

Attendance and behaviour: Expected standard

Personal development and wellbeing: Expected standard

Leadership and governance: Needs attention

The current framework does not award an overall grade.

Ofsted's report for this school

Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), 28 November 2023

Overall effectiveness: Requires improvement

Quality of education: Requires improvement

Behaviour and attitudes: Good

Personal development: Good

Leadership and management: Requires improvement

Early years: 9

Sixth form / post-16: 9

Ofsted's report for this school

Source: Ofsted: state-funded school inspections management information, checked 4 September 2026. All sources.

Exam results

Published by the Department for Education for the whole year group. Figures for smaller cohorts are withheld by DfE to protect pupil privacy and appear here as a dash, not a zero.

Key stage 4 (GCSE)
YearAttainment 8Progress 8 Grade 4+ English & mathsEBacc grade 4+
2024/25 33.20 - 36.8% 3.8%
2023/24 37.20 -0.63
likely between -0.88 and -0.38		 47.2% 6.3%
2022/23 35.10 -0.65
likely between -0.90 and -0.40		 36.5% 2.4%

Progress 8 compares pupils here with pupils nationally who had similar results at the end of primary school; 0 is average. It is an estimate, and DfE publishes a range it is likely to fall within. Where that range spans zero, the school cannot be said to be above or below average.

Teachers staying and leaving

These come from the School Workforce Census, which follows each teacher into the next year. The numbers count full-time jobs, so a teacher who works half the week counts as half. They are not a count of people.

Census yearTeachers (FTE) Still there a year later Moved to another state school Left state schools Left in total
2024/25 54.5 42.1 5.2 7.2 22.8%
2023/24 59.3 49.7 4.0 5.6 16.2%
2022/23 59.3 46.7 6.5 6.1 21.2%
2021/22 54.1 49.1 1.6 3.4 9.2%
2020/21 51.9 48.1 1.0 2.8 7.3%
2019/20 48.1 44.1 1.0 3.0 8.3%

This is turnover among teachers. It says nothing about the headteacher or the senior leadership team: DfE publishes leadership retention separately and we do not hold it by school.

Catchment area

Cheshire West and Chester publishes an admission zone for this school (Blacon High School Specialist Sports College).

Covers: 343 live postcodes across 4.924 km².

17 of the postcodes in this zone sit within 50 m of its edge. We place an address by its postcode centroid, not the address itself, so for those a specific house may fall the other side of the line.

Where it is

The shaded shape is the area the council published for Blacon High School, A Specialist Sports College. Living inside it is not the same as being offered a place. Councils use these areas in different ways. Some use them to help decide who gets a place when a school is full. Some use them to decide who gets free school transport. Many use them for both. Check with the council which it is here. The edge is drawn to about 20 metres, so do not use it to judge a single house.

The 6 nearest secondary schools we hold figures for, by straight-line distance from Blacon High School, A Specialist Sports College.

Nearby and related

Where these figures come from

This page was made on 9 September 2026. "Retrieved" means the day we downloaded the data. It is not the day the data was written, so the figures can be about an earlier year. How we compare schools.