The School Record

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

Wardle Academy

URN 140055 · Secondary · Academy converter · Rochdale

Birch Road, Rochdale, OL12 9RD

Figures current as of 4 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, 260 families named Wardle Academy as their first preference, and the school made 230 offers.

That is 1.13 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 75% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 75% 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 1.0 in 2021–2022 and 1.12 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 12 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 260 522 230 1.13
2024 284 557 256 1.11
2023 287 572 289 0.99
2022 302 552 289 1.04
2021 276 568 287 0.96
2020 291 580 236 1.23
2019 282 462 265 1.06
2018 260 399 250 1.04
2017 226 389 240 0.94
2016 221 393 227 0.97
2015 246 456 270 0.91
2014 237 408 234 1.01

“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 ungraded inspection, 20 October 2022

School remains Good

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 44.10 - 62.7% 20.6%
2023/24 40.20 -0.49
likely between -0.67 and -0.31
53.8% 17.8%
2022/23 44.50 -0.20
likely between -0.39 and -0.01
59.3% 25.2%

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 yearTeachers (FTE) Still there a year later Moved to another state school Left state schools Left in total
2024/25 75.8 68.8 5.0 2.0 9.2%
2023/24 82.5 69.4 5.0 8.1 15.9%
2022/23 81.0 61.0 9.2 10.8 24.7%
2021/22 76.4 48.8 18.6 9.0 36.1%
2020/21 71.2 61.4 6.0 3.8 13.8%
2019/20 73.3 60.8 8.0 4.5 17.1%

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

Nobody publishes a catchment area map for this school that we can read. That does not mean an address is outside its area. It means we hold no map, so we cannot tell you either way.

Where it is

The 6 nearest secondary schools we hold figures for, by straight-line distance from Wardle Academy.

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.