Woodhouse Academy

About Woodhouse Academy

Ofsted inspectors who visited Woodhouse Academy in February 2023 found a school where pupils behave well and feel safe, rating behaviour and attitudes as Good. The school, which educates children from ages 9 to 13, is a middle school in the Staffordshire Moorlands, and its most recent inspection judged it Good across all four key areas: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and leadership and management. This is consistent with its previous inspection in 2013, which also rated overall effectiveness as Good. With 419 pupils on roll against a capacity of 480, the school is not oversubscribed, meaning families in the area are likely to secure a place without a competitive scramble. The headteacher, Deborah Farr, leads a mixed-gender state school with no religious character, and the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals stands at 13.4 per cent, slightly below the national average for secondary schools.

Academically, Woodhouse Academy’s most recent Ofsted report notes that the quality of education is Good, though the school does not have published Progress 8 or Attainment 8 scores in this data set, so direct comparison with the Staffordshire local authority average Progress 8 score of -0.18 is not possible here. The school does not have a sixth form, so pupils typically move on to other local providers after Year 8 or Year 9. Among its local peers, The Friary School in Lichfield ranks highest on the finder’s scoring system, followed by St John Fisher Catholic College and Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group. For families considering Woodhouse Academy, the absence of published exam results at Key Stage 4 means that the Ofsted judgement of Good, backed by consistent ratings across two inspections, is the main academic signal available.

The school offers a solid range of facilities including art studios, an astro turf pitch, tennis courts, an ICT suite, a theatre, music rooms, and a chapel. Sports provision covers tennis, dance, netball, swimming, cricket, and rowing, while extracurricular clubs include newspaper, art club, drama, Young Enterprise, Model UN, choir, debate, and science club. For families with children who have additional needs, the school lists a broad set of SEND provisions, covering specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech and language communication needs, visual impairment, physical disability, autistic spectrum disorder, and other difficulties. This range suggests the school is equipped to support a variety of needs, though the data does not indicate how many pupils currently receive such support. Woodhouse Academy suits families looking for a middle-school model in a rural area, with a stable Good rating and a calm, well-behaved environment.

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