East Bergholt High School

About East Bergholt High School

East Bergholt High School is a mixed state secondary for 11 to 16 year olds in the Babergh district of Suffolk, currently home to 894 pupils against a capacity of 930. That leaves very little slack, and the demand data for the 2025/26 admissions cycle confirms the school is genuinely popular: it received 441 applications for 183 places, an oversubscription ratio of 2.41. Of those, 185 were first-preference applications, and 178 first-preference offers were made, meaning almost every family who put it top got in, but competition for the remaining places was fierce. The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals sits at 15.5%, which is above the national average for secondary schools and suggests a genuinely mixed intake in terms of socio-economic background. The school has no religious character and no sixth form, so students leave at 16, typically moving on to local colleges or sixth forms elsewhere.

Academically, East Bergholt performs solidly above the local average. Its Progress 8 score of +0.09 is well ahead of the Suffolk local authority average of -0.17, meaning pupils here make more progress than their peers in other schools across the county. The Attainment 8 score of 47.4 is respectable, and 48.4% of pupils achieved a grade 5 or above in English and maths (the basics 9-5 measure), compared with 67.9% at the 9-4 threshold. The EBacc average point score of 4.08 and the 14.7% entry rate for the EBacc suite suggest a fairly traditional academic diet, though the school is not pushing the full EBacc on a large scale. In its most recent graded Ofsted inspection, the school was rated Good overall, with Good for leadership and management, and the 2023 ungraded inspection confirmed it remains Good. The previous graded inspection in 2013 had rated it Requires Improvement, so the trajectory is clearly upward.

The school is well equipped for a comprehensive of its size, with facilities including a swimming pool, astro turf, theatre, music rooms, and a sports hall. The sports programme covers rugby, netball, hockey, cricket, and gymnastics, among others, and the clubs list includes Drama, DofE, Young Enterprise, and an orchestra. SEND provision is broad, covering specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, social and emotional mental health needs, speech and language communication needs, hearing impairment, multi-sensory impairment, physical disability, and autistic spectrum disorder. This is a school that suits families looking for a well-subscribed, improving comprehensive in a semi-rural Suffolk setting, where the intake is genuinely mixed and the academic outcomes are comfortably above the local norm. The lack of a sixth form means it is a natural fit for families who plan for their child to move on after GCSEs.

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