The School Record

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

Smith's Wood Academy

URN 143895 · Secondary · Academy sponsor led · Solihull

Windward Way, Birmingham, B36 0UE

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, 79 families named Smith's Wood Academy as their first preference, and the school made 118 offers.

That is 0.67 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 14% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 14% of comparable schools 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 0.6 in 2021–2022 and 0.5 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 8 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 79 233 118 0.67
2024 61 236 186 0.33
2023 79 316 206 0.38
2022 108 338 202 0.53
2021 98 329 149 0.66
2020 110 335 194 0.57
2019 126 370 180 0.70
2018 129 382 241 0.54

“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 2023 to 202620232026

Ofsted report card (current framework), 13 January 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), 7 March 2023

Category of concern: Special measures

Overall effectiveness: Inadequate

Quality of education: Inadequate

Behaviour and attitudes: Inadequate

Personal development: Inadequate

Leadership and management: Inadequate

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 32.20 - 36.5% 14.7%
2023/24 30.00 -1.52
likely between -1.76 and -1.28
42.1% 12.4%
2022/23 23.90 -1.83
likely between -2.04 and -1.62
23.0% 3.4%

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 41.0 34.0 5.0 2.0 17.1%
2023/24 47.6 34.2 9.0 4.4 28.2%
2022/23 51.0 35.8 12.6 2.6 29.8%
2021/22 50.8 36.6 7.6 6.6 28.0%
2020/21 53.8 42.8 3.0 8.0 20.4%
2019/20 58.2 44.8 8.0 5.4 23.0%

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 Smith's Wood 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.