St Bernards Catholic High School, Barrow

About St Bernards Catholic High School, Barrow

St Bernards Catholic High School in Barrow holds a Good rating from its most recent Ofsted inspection in 2022, a grade it has maintained consistently across both its graded inspections. The school’s Progress 8 score, the key measure of academic progress from Key Stage 2 to GCSE, stands at -0.63, which places it in the ‘well below average’ banding nationally. This means that, on average, pupils at St Bernards achieve nearly two-thirds of a grade less per subject than students with similar starting points across England. Within the Westmorland and Furness local authority, the school ranks 18th out of 19 secondary schools on this metric, and sits in the bottom 50% of schools nationally at the 88th percentile. The local authority average Progress 8 score is -0.12, so St Bernards is performing significantly below the typical school in its own area. The Attainment 8 score, which measures absolute GCSE performance, is 39.2 out of a possible 90.

Looking more closely at the GCSE results from 2023/24, 57.3% of pupils achieved a grade 4 or above in both English and maths, though this drops to 34.4% when looking at the stronger grade 5 or above threshold. The English Baccalaureate entry rate is very low at 3.1%, and only 2.3% of pupils achieved the EBacc at grade 4 or above. The school’s EBacc average point score is 3.28. Breaking down the Progress 8 components, the weakest area is English, where the score is -0.84, followed by the open element at -0.72. Maths progress is relatively less negative at -0.49, and the EBacc subjects score -0.55. The school does not have a sixth form, so all pupils leave at 16. In its 2022 inspection, Ofsted rated all four key categories — quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management — as Good, with the previous 2015 inspection also awarding Good for overall effectiveness and leadership.

St Bernards is a Roman Catholic secondary school for 11 to 16 year olds, with 674 pupils on roll against a capacity of 916. It is oversubscribed: for 2025/26 entry, there were 234 applications for 102 places, a ratio of 2.29 applicants per place, with 94 first-preference offers made. The school serves a community with above-average disadvantage, as 28.7% of pupils are eligible for free school meals. Facilities include science labs, an ICT suite, music rooms, a library, a chapel, an astro turf pitch, and a sports hall. The school offers a wide range of sports including rowing, martial arts, and gymnastics, plus clubs such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, Model UN, and Young Enterprise. SEND provision covers eight categories, including autistic spectrum disorder, speech and language communication needs, and social, emotional and mental health difficulties. This school will suit families who value a Catholic ethos and a broad extracurricular offer, but who are aware that academic outcomes, particularly in English and the EBacc subjects, are below both local and national averages.

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