Pendle Vale College
URN 134989 · Secondary · Community school · Lancashire
Oxford Road, Nelson, BB9 8LF
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, 226 families named Pendle Vale College as their first preference, and the school made 203 offers.
That is 1.11 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 74% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.
position among schools in England admitting at Year 7, 2025 intake
Fewer families are naming it first. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 1.31 in 2021–2022 and 1.06 in 2024–2025.
| Intake | 1st preferences | All preferences | Offers made | 1st prefs per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 226 | 555 | 203 | 1.11 |
| 2024 | 209 | 543 | 206 | 1.01 |
| 2023 | 232 | 522 | 207 | 1.12 |
| 2022 | 278 | 573 | 203 | 1.37 |
| 2021 | 259 | 533 | 208 | 1.25 |
| 2020 | 308 | 607 | 209 | 1.47 |
| 2019 | 309 | 590 | 208 | 1.49 |
| 2018 | 267 | 542 | 208 | 1.28 |
| 2017 | 240 | 465 | 203 | 1.18 |
| 2016 | 196 | 471 | 209 | 0.94 |
| 2015 | 189 | 404 | 206 | 0.92 |
| 2014 | 192 | 453 | 209 | 0.92 |
“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 report card (current framework), 10 February 2026
Safeguarding: Met
Inclusion: Expected standard
Curriculum and teaching: Expected standard
Achievement: Expected standard
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 ungraded inspection, 10 November 2021
School remains Good
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.
| Year | Attainment 8 | Progress 8 | Grade 4+ English & maths | EBacc grade 4+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 42.50 | - | 54.1% | 25.4% |
| 2023/24 | 41.50 | 0.07 likely between -0.13 and 0.26 |
57.9% | 21.5% |
| 2022/23 | 40.10 | 0.03 likely between -0.16 and 0.23 |
49.3% | 20.2% |
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 year | Teachers (FTE) | Still there a year later | Moved to another state school | Left state schools | Left in total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 66.3 | 62.3 | 0.0 | 4.0 | 6.0% |
| 2023/24 | 69.7 | 56.5 | 5.0 | 8.2 | 18.9% |
| 2022/23 | 68.5 | 58.9 | 3.8 | 5.8 | 14.0% |
| 2021/22 | 65.8 | 53.8 | 5.0 | 7.0 | 18.2% |
| 2020/21 | 65.3 | 60.3 | 1.0 | 4.0 | 7.7% |
| 2019/20 | 65.3 | 63.3 | 0.0 | 2.0 | 3.1% |
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 (Pendle Vale College).
Covers: 687 live postcodes across 34.947 km².
This zone overlaps others. An address here may also fall inside the catchment of Colne Primet Academy, Marsden Heights Community College and Ribblesdale School. Being in this catchment does not mean being in only this one.
70 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 Pendle Vale 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 Pendle Vale College.
- Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School: 0.6 km (0.4 miles) north-east, Colne
- Colne Primet Academy: 0.8 km (0.5 miles) north-east, Colne
- Marsden Heights Community College: 2.5 km (1.6 miles) south-west, Nelson
- Colne Park High School: 3.5 km (2.2 miles) north-east, Colne
- Sir John Thursby Community College: 4.7 km (2.9 miles) south, Burnley
- Blessed Trinity Roman Catholic College, A Voluntary Academy: 5.9 km (3.7 miles) south, Burnley
Nearby and related
- Other schools near Pendle Vale College
- All schools in Lancashire
- Schools in the BB9 postcode district
- What data we hold
- This page as JSON: the same figures, for software that would rather not read a web page
Where these figures come from
- Department for Education: Get Information about Schools. School identity, type, phase and address
Retrieved 2 September 2026 - Ofsted: state-funded school inspections management information. Inspection outcomes, published monthly
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - Department for Education: school-level applications and offers. Preferences and offers, 2014 to 2025 intakes
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - Department for Education: key stage 4 performance. Attainment 8, Progress 8 and EBacc, by school
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - Department for Education: school workforce in England. Teacher turnover, by school, from the School Workforce Census
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - Lancashire: school admission zones. arcgis fetch 2026-09-05
Retrieved 5 September 2026
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.