The School Record

Oulder Hill Leadership Academy

Secondary school · Rochdale

Hudsons Walk, Rochdale, OL11 5EF

This school became an academy on 1 March 2022. Before that it was a community school, under Oulder Hill Community School and Language College (URN 105840).

About the school

Type of school
Academy
Academy trust
Star Academies
Became an academy
1 March 2022. Before that it was a community school, under Oulder Hill Community School and Language College (URN 105840).
Ages
11 to 16
Boys or girls
Boys and girls
Sixth form
No
Telephone
01706 645522
School number (URN)
148847

Other schools run by Star Academies

Star Academies runs 33 other schools with a page here. These are the 10 nearest.

From Get Information about Schools, retrieved 2 September 2026. Schools update their own entries, so these can be out of date.

How big the school is

In 2024 this school had 1,500 places and 1,175 children on roll.

325 places were unfilled, which is 22% of the school.

In 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 the school had 1,298 children on roll on average, against 1,175 in 2024. Some of those years are from its record under an earlier school number.

Places are the whole school added up, every year group together. That is not the number of places a school offers to new children in one year.

Source: Department for Education school capacity collection.

Children in each year group

As counted on one day in January 2026, the most recent school census. These are children, not places.

Children in each year group at Oulder Hill Leadership Academy

Y7 212, Y8 267, Y9 254, Y10 178, Y11 241212Y7267Y8254Y9178Y10241Y11
Source: Department for Education school census, January 2026.
Year groupChildren
Year 7 212
Year 8 267
Year 9 254
Year 10 178
Year 11 241

This is not a list of spare places. Places per year group are not published, and the count is from January. Children join and leave all year, so a year group that looked two under in January can be full by March.

If you are moving into the area and need a place during the school year, ask Rochdale. Councils handle applications made during the school year, including for schools that set their own admission rules. They hold the up-to-date position, which this page does not.

Who decides who gets a place

This school sets its own admission rules, through its academy trust, rather than Rochdale setting them.

Look on the school's own website for its admission arrangements. An admission authority has to agree its rules every year and publish them. The council still takes the application.

Taken from the kind of school this is, as recorded by the Department for Education. We do not hold this school's rules themselves: a summary of an admission rule is not the rule, and only the admission authority's own published arrangements are binding.

How to apply

Applications for a place starting in September 2027 closed on 31 October 2026, unless your council set a later date.

That is a Saturday, and some councils accept applications until the next working day. Your council's website gives its own closing date.

Councils send every offer for secondary school places on the same day, 1 March 2027 or the next working day.

An application made after the closing date is what the rules call a late application. It is still a normal application and the council still handles it, but it is dealt with after the ones that arrived on time, so it does not get an answer on the day above.

You apply through the council where you live, even for a school in another area. You do not apply to the school. Find your council's secondary school application on GOV.UK.

To ask about visiting the school, or anything else about it, contact the school. Telephone: 01706 645522.

Links and dates can change. Your council's own website has the final word. The dates are set nationally by the School Admissions Code 2021. GOV.UK link checked 23 September 2026. Contact details from Get Information about Schools.

How many families applied

Preferences expressed and offers made at Year 7, as published by the Department for Education. These describe demand, not whether a particular child would be offered a place.

In the 2026 intake, 175 families named Oulder Hill Leadership Academy as their first preference, and the school made 210 offers.

That is 0.83 first preferences per place offered, higher than 29% of schools admitting at Year 7 in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 29% of comparable schools
Position among schools in England admitting at Year 7, 2026 intake.

Little change in first preferences per place. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 0.66 in 2022–2023 and 0.69 in 2025–2026.

First preferences for this school changed little, from 150 a year in 2022–2023 to 149 in 2025–2026. Across all 13 schools in Rochdale admitting at Year 7, first preferences changed little over the same years, from 2,804 to 2,593.

Counts of families, not places.

Across Rochdale as a whole, 86.8% of families applying for a secondary place for September 2026 were offered their first choice, and 96.5% were offered one of the three schools they named. That is a figure for the council, not for this school. How the 2026 round went in Rochdale.

Compared with its own past

More families than its recent average put this school first.

In 2026, 175 families put this school first. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 158 a year.

In 2026, 579 families named this school somewhere on their list. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 491 a year.

In 2026, every family who put this school first was offered a place here (175 of 175). In 2021 to 2025 it was 99 in every 100.

In 2026, 1 of the 210 offers went to a child living outside Rochdale. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 1 a year.

Some of the earlier years are for Oulder Hill Community School and Language College, the school this one replaced.

Each figure is compared only with the same figure at this school. "About the same" means within 10 in every 100 of the average.

First preferences and offers at Year 7

Families naming Oulder Hill Leadership Academy first, against the offers it made, for every intake year held.

First preferences from 243 in 2014 to 175 in 2026; Offers made from 264 in 2014 to 210 in 20261002003004002014201620182020202220242026Offers made210First preferences175
Source: Department for Education, school-level applications and offers. Preferences count families. Offers count places given out on offer day. The vertical axis does not start at zero.

Figures before 2022 are from Oulder Hill Community School and Language College, the school this one replaced, before it became an academy. The government's school register links the two, and they are the same school.

Applications and offers at Year 7, 13 intake years
Intake 1st preferences1st choice All preferencesAny choice Offers madeOffers 1st prefs per placePer place
2026 175 579 210 0.83
2025 123 469 225 0.55
2024 176 535 300 0.59
2023 161 519 294 0.55
2022 138 381 178 0.78
2021
as Oulder Hill Community School and Language College		 191 551 258 0.74
2020
as Oulder Hill Community School and Language College		 175 617 261 0.67
2019
as Oulder Hill Community School and Language College		 257 536 298 0.86
2018
as Oulder Hill Community School and Language College		 280 527 299 0.94
2017
as Oulder Hill Community School and Language College		 251 493 300 0.84
2016
as Oulder Hill Community School and Language College		 249 536 297 0.84
2015
as Oulder Hill Community School and Language College		 213 504 246 0.87
2014
as Oulder Hill Community School and Language College		 243 535 264 0.92

“Offers made” is the number of offers on offer day, not the number of places the school has.

Source: Department for Education: school-level applications and offers, checked 14 September 2026. All sources.

Where families put this school on their list

In 2026 this school made 210 offers: 175 to families who had named it first, 15 to families who named it second and 3 to families who named it third.

17 offers went to families who named it fourth or lower, or who were admitted another way.

A school is not allowed to treat a family differently because of where it sat on their list. The School Admissions Code says an admission authority must not give extra priority to children whose parents rank preferred schools in a particular order.

The order is used at the end, by the council, and not by the school. Where more than one school could take a child, the council offers the one the family put highest.

Leaving the other boxes empty does not change how this school considers an application. If none of the schools a family names can offer a place, the council has to offer one at a school that has room, and that school may be further away.

Source: Department for Education school level applications and offers, and the School Admissions Code 2021, paragraphs 1.9 and 2.11.

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), 7 January 2025

Overall effectiveness
Not judged
Quality of education
Good
Behaviour and attitudes
Good
Personal development
Good
Leadership and management
Good

Ofsted's report for this school

Source: Ofsted: state-funded school inspections management information, checked 14 September 2026. All sources.

If you are refused a place

In 2026, families in Rochdale lodged 132 appeals about a secondary school place.

100 of them were heard by a panel and 14 succeeded, which is about 14 in every 100 heard.

The other 32 did not reach a panel. Most appeals that do not are withdrawn because a place comes up first.

This is a record of decisions already made. A panel hears one case at a time and decides it on what that family sets out, so these figures do not indicate what would happen in any particular appeal.

These count appeals about every school in Rochdale, not this school. Nobody publishes appeal figures school by school.

Source: Department for Education, admission appeals in England, reporting year 2026.

Waiting lists

Being refused a place does not end the application. Every admission authority has to keep a waiting list until at least 31 December of the school year the child would have started, and some keep them for longer.

A waiting list is not a queue. The rules say a child cannot be given priority for having joined it earlier, or for having applied earlier. The list is put back in order against the school's own admission rules every time a child is added, so a place can move further away as well as nearer.

Councils differ on whether a refused child goes onto the list automatically. The council that sent the refusal is the only place that can say which it does.

From the School Admissions Code 2021, paragraph 2.15.

Children with special educational needs

In January 2026, 17 of the 1,152 children here had an education, health and care plan. That is 2 in every 100. Across schools in England the middle figure is 4 in every 100.

A further 164 were on SEN support, which is help arranged by the school without a plan. That is 14 in every 100, against a middle figure of 15 in every 100 across England.

A school named in a child's education, health and care plan has to admit that child. That duty holds even when the school is full, and it sits outside the rules that decide who gets a place when there are more children than places. Which school is named is decided with the council while the plan is being written, not through the normal application.

Source: Department for Education, special educational needs in England, January 2026 census.

Who goes to this school

In January 2026, 418 of the 1,152 children here were known to be eligible for free school meals. That is 36 in every 100.

More children are eligible here than at half of secondary schools in England, where the middle figure is 27 in every 100.

English was not the first language for 31 in every 100 children here. Across secondary schools the middle figure is 12 in every 100.

This describes the children who go to this school. It is not a measure of the school. Most children go to a school near home, so it is mostly a fact about the streets around it.

This matters when reading results. Across the 3,610 schools we hold 2024 key stage 4 results for, the fifth with the fewest eligible children averaged 81% getting grade 4 or above in English and maths. The fifth with the most averaged 35%.

Those are averages of many schools all over the country. This school's own results are further down this page exactly as published.

Source: Department for Education school census, January 2026. Free school meal eligibility is counted for every pupil on roll.

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: what these numbers are made of

Getting grade 4 or above in English and maths.

Across the 3 years published, this measure ran from 61% in 2022 to 65.6% in 2024, a difference of 4.6 points.

The year group had 221 children, so one child is worth about 0.5 percentage points and that difference is about 9 children.

Half of schools in England move by 6 points or more across the same three years, so movement on this scale is ordinary rather than a sign of anything.

Key stage 4 (GCSE)
YearAttainment 8Progress 8 Grade 4+ English & mathsEBacc grade 4+
2024/25 44.40 - 65.6% 28.1%
2023/24 42.90 -0.11
likely between -0.29 and 0.06		 65.4% 17.9%
2022/23 41.10 -0.14
likely between -0.31 and 0.03		 61.0% 14.5%

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.

The share of teachers who left, each year

Counted as full-time jobs rather than people, and counting a move to another state school as leaving this one.

2022 36.7%, 2023 33.1%, 2024 16.2%36.7%202233.1%202316.2%2024
Source: Department for Education, School Workforce Census. The year shown is the census year; leaving is measured by where the teacher was a year later. A small school's figure moves a long way on one or two people.
Census yearTeachers (FTE) Still there a year later Moved to another state school Left state schools Left in total
2024/25 55.1 46.3 4.9 4.0 16.2%
2023/24 52.6 35.2 10.4 7.0 33.1%
2022/23 58.9 37.3 8.4 13.2 36.7%

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, and schools nearby

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

Nearby and related

Where these figures come from

Using this information

This is information only, not advice. It may have mistakes in it, or be out of date. Check with the school and the council before you decide anything. We collect these figures from official publications and check them, but mistakes can get through. If you find one, tell us.

Figures current as of 14 September 2026.

This page was updated on 5 November 2026. "Retrieved" is the date of our copy of each source, not the year its figures describe. How we compare schools.