De La Salle School

About De La Salle School

De La Salle School in Basildon holds a Good rating from Ofsted, a grade it has maintained across both its most recent inspections, including an ungraded visit in 2024 that confirmed the school remains Good. However, the most telling academic metric is its Progress 8 score of -0.2, which places it in the bottom 50 per cent of schools nationally. This means that, on average, pupils at De La Salle achieve slightly less progress between Key Stage 2 and GCSEs than their peers across the country. The school’s Attainment 8 score of 44.6 and its EBacc average point score of 4.03 give a fuller picture of where students finish. While the Progress 8 score is below the national average of zero, it is very close to the Essex local authority average of -0.18, suggesting the school is broadly in line with other state secondaries in the area.

Looking deeper at the breakdown, De La Salle’s Progress 8 score is dragged down most by English (-0.36) and the EBacc subjects (-0.27), while open subjects (-0.01) are almost exactly at the national average. The school’s Progress 8 banding is rated as Average, which reflects that the confidence interval around its score spans from -0.43 to 0.03, meaning the true figure could be higher or lower. In terms of basics, 64.9 per cent of pupils achieved a grade 4 or above in both English and maths, and 41.1 per cent achieved a grade 5 or above. The EBacc entry rate is high at 68.9 per cent, though only 29.8 per cent of pupils achieved the EBacc at grade 4 or above. Within the Basildon local authority, De La Salle ranks 4th out of 8 schools by Progress 8, and 41st out of 86 similar schools across Essex.

The school is heavily oversubscribed: for 2025/26 entry, there were 779 applications for 141 places, with 245 first-preference applications and 129 offers made to first-preference families. This suggests strong local demand despite the mixed academic outcomes. De La Salle is a Roman Catholic secondary for pupils aged 11 to 16, with no sixth form, and it currently has 765 pupils against a capacity of 750, meaning it is slightly over capacity. The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals is 26.1 per cent, above the national average. Facilities include a swimming pool, astro turf, tennis courts, science labs, and a chapel, while the school offers a wide range of clubs from chess and coding to the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and orchestra. SEND provision is broad, covering specific learning difficulties, autism, speech and language needs, and physical disabilities. This is a school that suits families who value a Catholic ethos and a broad extracurricular offer, but who are realistic about academic outcomes that sit around the local average.

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