The School Record

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

Lift Unity City

URN 133768 · Secondary · Academy sponsor led · Middlesbrough

Ormesby Road, Middlesbrough, TS3 8RE

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, 219 families named Lift Unity City as their first preference, and the school made 203 offers.

That is 1.08 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 70% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 70% 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 0.79 in 2021–2022 and 0.95 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 12 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 219 363 203 1.08
2024 203 319 249 0.82
2023 207 339 245 0.84
2022 174 279 204 0.85
2021 146 225 202 0.72
2020 160 232 202 0.79
2019 121 197 208 0.58
2018 107 180 188 0.57
2017 90 157 168 0.54
2016 128 224 184 0.70
2015 104 190 163 0.64
2014 92 179 114 0.81

“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 inspections from 2022 to 202620222026

Ofsted report card (current framework), 21 April 2026

Safeguarding: Met

Inclusion: Expected standard

Curriculum and teaching: Needs attention

Achievement: Needs attention

Attendance and behaviour: Expected standard

Personal development and wellbeing: Expected standard

Leadership and governance: Expected standard

The current framework does not award an overall grade.

Ofsted's report for this school

Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), 10 May 2022

Overall effectiveness: Good

Quality of education: Good

Behaviour and attitudes: Good

Personal development: Good

Leadership and management: Good

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 34.20 - 41.3% 9.7%
2023/24 31.80 -0.87
likely between -1.11 and -0.63		 38.4% 2.3%
2022/23 35.70 -0.57
likely between -0.81 and -0.32		 43.0% 2.7%

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 63.4 58.0 3.4 2.0 8.5%
2023/24 61.6 52.6 6.0 3.0 14.6%
2022/23 56.6 35.0 15.0 6.6 38.2%
2021/22 58.0 48.0 6.0 4.0 17.2%
2020/21 55.6 50.0 1.0 4.6 10.1%
2019/20 56.6 46.6 6.0 4.0 17.7%

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

Middlesbrough publishes an admission zone for this school (Unity City Academy), in force from 2021.

Covers: 790 live postcodes across 7.755 km².

37 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.

How places were allocated

Middlesbrough publishes these figures on national offer day, the day families are told which school their child has been given. It is the only place that says how the school chose between the children who applied.

2025 intake

Places the school planned to fill: 210

Places offered: 210

More children wanted a place than there were places: yes

The rule that decided the last place: Catchment

The child who lived furthest away and still got in lived: 1.29 miles away (2074 m)

These distances are measured in a straight line across the map.

Children waiting for a place: 28

Where it is

The shaded shape is the area the council published for Lift Unity City. 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 Lift Unity City.

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.