Mark Hall Academy

About Mark Hall Academy

Mark Hall Academy is a mixed secondary school in Harlow for pupils aged 11 to 16, currently educating 843 students against a capacity of 1,080. That leaves a fair amount of spare places, but the school is oversubscribed for 2025/26 entry: it received 400 applications for 195 places, with 146 of those coming as first preferences. That’s an oversubscription ratio of 2.05, suggesting real local demand despite the school not being full overall. The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals stands at 27.4%, which is significantly above the national average of around 23% and well above the Essex local authority average of roughly 16%. This indicates the school serves a community with higher-than-average levels of disadvantage, something that will be relevant when considering its academic outcomes. The school has no religious character and is a state-funded academy, with Matt Carter as headteacher.

Academically, Mark Hall Academy faces clear challenges. Its Progress 8 score in 2023/24 was -0.82, placing it in the ‘well below average’ banding nationally. That means pupils here achieve nearly a grade less per subject across eight GCSEs compared with pupils with similar starting points elsewhere. The Attainment 8 score was 34.2, and just 18.5% of pupils achieved a grade 5 or above in English and maths. The EBacc average point score was 3.08, with only 3.8% of pupils entering and achieving the full EBacc combination. In the local authority context, the average Progress 8 score across all Essex secondary schools is -0.18, so Mark Hall’s figure is significantly weaker. Within Harlow specifically, it ranks 5th out of 7 schools on Progress 8, and across Essex it sits at 67th out of 86. Its most recent Ofsted inspection in March 2025 judged overall effectiveness as ‘not judged’ (the school had been under a monitoring visit), but the graded inspection from November 2022 rated it ‘Requires improvement’ overall, with leadership and management and quality of education both graded 2 (Good) at that time.

On the ground, the school offers a decent range of facilities including science labs, music rooms, tennis courts, and an astro turf pitch, plus a sixth form centre (though it does not have its own official sixth form). Sports on offer include tennis, athletics, swimming, netball, basketball, dance, and rowing, while clubs range from Debate and DofE to Gardening and Eco Club. The school’s SEND provisions are broad, covering specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, social emotional and mental health needs, speech and language communication needs, hearing and visual impairments, physical disability, and autistic spectrum disorder. Parent View responses from 2024/25 show 65% of respondents would recommend the school, though opinions are mixed: 69% of parents agreed or strongly agreed their child is happy, and 76% felt their child is safe, but only 32% agreed or strongly agreed that SEND children get the support they need, and 46% felt concerns are dealt with properly. This is a school that suits families who value a broad extracurricular offer and are comfortable with a school that is still working through improvement, particularly around academic outcomes and SEND support.

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