The School Record

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

Sir John Talbot's School

URN 141176 · Secondary · Academy sponsor led · Shropshire

Prees Road, Whitchurch, SY13 2BY

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, 138 families named Sir John Talbot's School as their first preference, and the school made 142 offers.

That is 0.97 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 52% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 52% of comparable schools position among schools in England admitting at Year 7, 2025 intake

Little change. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 1.01 in 2021–2022 and 0.97 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 11 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 138 231 142 0.97
2024 152 237 158 0.96
2023 143 220 146 0.98
2022 148 244 149 0.99
2021 131 196 128 1.02
2020 139 212 128 1.09
2019 162 227 131 1.24
2018 95 142 107 0.89
2017 78 116 89 0.88
2016 89 144 90 0.99
2015 75 98 80 0.94

“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 graded inspection (previous framework), 13 December 2023

Overall effectiveness: Good

Quality of education: Good

Behaviour and attitudes: Good

Personal development: Outstanding

Leadership and management: Outstanding

Early years: 9

Sixth form / post-16: 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 46.80 - 69.8% 15.1%
2023/24 47.70 0.18
likely between -0.06 and 0.41		 64.3% 20.1%
2022/23 46.10 0.09
likely between -0.17 and 0.35		 66.2% 12.3%

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 56.1 49.9 3.0 3.2 11.1%
2023/24 50.9 46.9 0.0 4.0 7.9%
2021/22 54.5 43.5 5.4 5.6 20.2%
2020/21 53.0 47.7 2.0 3.3 10.0%
2019/20 49.1 43.4 3.0 2.7 11.6%
2018/19 42.8 39.0 3.2 0.6 8.9%

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

Shropshire publishes an admission zone for this school (Sir John Talbot's School).

Covers: 559 live postcodes across 93.430 km².

4 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 Talbot's 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 Sir John Talbot's 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.