The School Record

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

Waterside Academy

URN 147653 · Secondary · Free schools · Hackney

317-319 Kingsland Road, London, E8 4DL

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, 32 families named Waterside Academy as their first preference, and the school made 46 offers.

That is 0.70 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 16% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 16% 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 0.17 in 2021–2022 and 0.65 in 2024–2025.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 6 intake years
Intake 1st preferences All preferences Offers made 1st prefs per place
2025 32 180 46 0.70
2024 31 156 51 0.61
2023 28 144 91 0.31
2022 14 122 64 0.22
2021 12 169 94 0.13
2020 20 157 97 0.21

“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 2022 to 202620222026

Ofsted report card (current framework), 27 January 2026

Safeguarding: Met

Inclusion: Strong standard

Curriculum and teaching: Strong standard

Achievement: Strong standard

Attendance and behaviour: Strong standard

Personal development and wellbeing: Strong standard

Leadership and governance: Strong standard

The current framework does not award an overall grade.

Ofsted's report for this school

Ofsted graded inspection (previous framework), 9 February 2022

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.

Key stage 4 (GCSE)
YearAttainment 8Progress 8 Grade 4+ English & mathsEBacc grade 4+
2024/25 44.60 - 61.5% 23.1%
2023/24 48.20 1.04
likely between 0.68 and 1.40
67.7% 25.8%
2022/23 46.00 0.71
likely between 0.36 and 1.07
60.0% 31.1%

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 yearTeachers (FTE) Still there a year later Moved to another state school Left state schools Left in total
2020/21 36.0 20.0 4.0 12.0 44.4%
2019/20 2.4 1.2 0.0 1.2 50.0%

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 Waterside 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.