The School Record

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

Sir John Thursby Community College

URN 134996 · Secondary · Foundation school · Lancashire

Eastern Avenue, Burnley, BB10 2AT

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, 243 families named Sir John Thursby Community College as their first preference, and the school made 222 offers.

That is 1.09 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 72% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 72% 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 0.88 in 2021–2022 and 1.09 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 12 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 243 499 222 1.09
2024 241 502 223 1.08
2023 202 438 226 0.89
2022 214 445 222 0.96
2021 175 428 221 0.79
2020 212 475 223 0.95
2019 184 443 223 0.83
2018 193 399 220 0.88
2017 177 338 224 0.79
2016 176 339 225 0.78
2015 173 352 207 0.84
2014 193 355 209 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.

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 2020 to 202320202023

Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), 25 April 2023

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

Ofsted ungraded inspection, 22 January 2020

School remains Good (Concerns) - S5 Next

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 41.00 - 50.7% 26.3%
2023/24 37.50 -0.29
likely between -0.49 and -0.09		 51.1% 23.6%
2022/23 41.30 -0.14
likely between -0.33 and 0.06		 51.8% 28.6%

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 79.3 66.4 5.5 7.4 16.3%
2023/24 77.4 62.9 9.3 5.2 18.7%
2022/23 80.6 70.0 8.0 2.6 13.2%
2021/22 78.0 61.8 4.0 12.2 20.8%
2020/21 76.2 67.2 3.0 6.0 11.8%
2019/20 71.0 64.0 2.0 5.0 9.9%

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 (Sir John Thursby College).

Covers: 1,987 live postcodes across 84.937 km².

This zone overlaps others. An address here may also fall inside the catchment of Marsden Heights Community College, Shuttleworth College and Unity College. Being in this catchment does not mean being in only this one.

23 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 Sir John Thursby Community 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 Sir John Thursby Community 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.