Marsden Heights Community College
URN 146276 · Secondary · Academy sponsor led · Lancashire
Edge End Lane, Nelson, BB9 0PR
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, 227 families named Marsden Heights Community College as their first preference, and the school made 207 offers.
That is 1.10 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 72% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.
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 0.77 in 2021–2022 and 1.06 in 2024–2025.
| Intake | 1st preferences | All preferences | Offers made | 1st prefs per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 227 | 479 | 207 | 1.10 |
| 2024 | 209 | 472 | 206 | 1.01 |
| 2023 | 173 | 399 | 210 | 0.82 |
| 2022 | 163 | 389 | 208 | 0.78 |
| 2021 | 157 | 400 | 205 | 0.77 |
“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 graded inspection (previous framework), 3 October 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
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 | 40.30 | - | 53.8% | 6.2% |
| 2023/24 | 40.10 | 0.14 likely between -0.07 and 0.35 |
57.6% | 7.8% |
| 2022/23 | 41.50 | 0.10 likely between -0.11 and 0.31 |
59.1% | 10.1% |
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 | 55.4 | 38.5 | 5.0 | 11.9 | 30.5% |
| 2023/24 | 60.7 | 49.1 | 5.0 | 6.6 | 19.1% |
| 2022/23 | 58.8 | 48.7 | 2.8 | 7.2 | 17.0% |
| 2021/22 | 55.9 | 47.3 | 3.0 | 5.6 | 15.4% |
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 (Marsden Heights Community College).
Covers: 860 live postcodes across 10.267 km².
This zone overlaps others. An address here may also fall inside the catchment of Colne Park High School, Colne Primet Academy, Pendle Vale College, Sir John Thursby Community College and Unity College. Being in this catchment does not mean being in only this one.
58 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 Marsden Heights 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 Marsden Heights Community College.
- Pendle Vale College: 2.5 km (1.6 miles) north-east, Nelson
- Sir John Thursby Community College: 2.7 km (1.6 miles) south, Burnley
- Ss John Fisher and Thomas More Roman Catholic High School: 3.1 km (1.9 miles) north-east, Colne
- Colne Primet Academy: 3.3 km (2.1 miles) north-east, Colne
- Blessed Trinity Roman Catholic College, A Voluntary Academy: 3.7 km (2.3 miles) south, Burnley
- Unity College: 5.0 km (3.1 miles) south, Burnley
Nearby and related
- Other schools near Marsden Heights Community 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, 2021 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.