The School Record

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

Penwortham Girls' High School

URN 119765 · Secondary · Community school · Lancashire

Cop Lane, Preston, PR1 0SR

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, 166 families named Penwortham Girls' High School as their first preference, and the school made 160 offers.

That is 1.04 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 65% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 65% of comparable schools position among schools in England admitting at Year 7, 2025 intake

More families are naming it first. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 0.94 in 2021–2022 and 1.07 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 12 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 166 502 160 1.04
2024 175 496 158 1.11
2023 158 505 156 1.01
2022 139 440 158 0.88
2021 152 455 153 0.99
2020 160 483 152 1.05
2019 154 480 154 1.00
2018 173 524 154 1.12
2017 193 525 154 1.25
2016 168 466 154 1.09
2015 129 425 152 0.85
2014 168 411 156 1.08

“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.

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 graded inspection (previous framework), 21 May 2024

Overall effectiveness: Outstanding

Quality of education: Outstanding

Behaviour and attitudes: Outstanding

Personal development: Outstanding

Leadership and management: Outstanding

Early years: 9

Sixth form / post-16: 9

Ofsted's report for this school

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 52.90 - 74.2% 55.3%
2023/24 57.50 0.57
likely between 0.34 and 0.80
86.2% 64.2%
2022/23 59.50 0.73
likely between 0.50 and 0.95
92.2% 66.9%

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 46.8 43.0 3.0 0.8 8.1%
2023/24 47.5 42.5 2.0 3.0 10.5%
2022/23 46.2 42.2 2.0 2.0 8.7%
2021/22 44.6 42.6 1.0 1.0 4.5%
2020/21 44.8 42.0 2.0 0.8 6.2%
2019/20 46.6 41.6 1.0 4.0 10.7%

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

Lancashire publishes an admission zone for this school (Penwortham Girls' High School).

Covers: 977 live postcodes across 51.057 km².

This zone overlaps others. An address here may also fall inside the catchment of Lostock Hall Academy and Penwortham Priory Academy. Being in this catchment does not mean being in only this one.

290 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 Penwortham Girls' High School. 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 Penwortham Girls' High School.

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.