School Context Comparator

Exam results say a lot about a school's pupils, not just its teaching. A school where many children are disadvantaged or have special educational needs will usually have lower results, even if it's doing a great job. This compares each school with what you'd expect from the pupils it teaches.

Area

Secondary schools in Cheshire East: GCSE results in context

Attainment 8, 2024/25. Each numbered dot is a school (see the table below). Above the line means better results than you'd expect from its pupils; the shaded strip is "about what you'd expect".

Better than expected
About as expected
Below expected

The faint grey dots behind are every other school in England, for comparison.

Green ring: low teacher turnover – among the quarter of similar schools in England where teachers are most likely to stay (three-year average).

Loading stats for 2,979 schools across England…

Did you know? Attainment 8 is the average of a pupil's best eight GCSE-level grades, with English and maths counting twice. How this works

How each school compares

#	School	Compared with what you'd expect	Actual	Expected	Gap	Disadvantaged	SEN	EAL	Teacher turnover(a year)
1	Knutsford Academy	Above	54.9	49.3	+5.6	10%	22%	3%	12%below average
2	Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College	Above	55.6	51.3	+4.3	12%	6%	7%	13%below average
3	The Fallibroome Academy	Above	53.4	49.1	+4.3	16%	10%	4%	9%low
4	Poynton High School	Above	53.0	50.2	+2.8	12%	12%	6%	8%low
5	Brine Leas School	Above	49.7	47.0	+2.7	18%	20%	2%	10%low
6	Wilmslow High School	As expected	51.4	49.3	+2.1	14%	14%	6%	10%low
7	Alsager School	As expected	51.9	50.2	+1.7	13%	7%	2%	8%low
8	All Hallows Catholic College	As expected	49.6	49.2	+0.4	16%	18%	14%	6%low
9	Tytherington School	As expected	50.1	49.7	+0.4	16%	12%	11%	9%low
10	The Macclesfield Academy	As expected	42.7	43.6	−0.9	29%	21%	7%	17%
11	Eaton Bank Academy	As expected	46.9	48.2	−1.3	20%	8%	5%	11%low
12	Sandbach School	As expected	48.2	49.6	−1.4	13%	15%	7%	15%below average
13	Shavington Academy	As expected	47.8	49.9	−2.1	14%	12%	6%	9%low
14	Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School	Below	48.2	50.5	−2.3	13%	10%	6%	15%below average
15	St Thomas More Catholic High School	Below	47.7	50.3	−2.6	22%	12%	30%	13%below average
16	Middlewich High School	Below	41.2	45.9	−4.7	24%	13%	3%	41%high
17	Congleton High School	Below	44.8	49.8	−5.0	12%	12%	2%	13%below average
18	The Oaks Academy	Well below	35.4	43.4	−8.0	48%	12%	42%	21%high
19	Ruskin Community High School	Well below	37.9	46.3	−8.4	33%	11%	26%	13%below average
20	Sir William Stanier School	Well below	28.4	41.1	−12.7	47%	17%	27%	22%high

Percentages are for the pupils who took their GCSEs that year. Disadvantaged: eligible for free school meals at any point in the last six years, or looked after by the council. SEN: special educational needs (SEN support or an EHC plan). EAL: English as an additional language.

How this works

We call these Companion Results. Read the plain-English explainer →

We looked at every comparable state secondary school in England (3,053 schools) to see how GCSE results usually change with the make-up of a year group. On average:

For every 10 more disadvantaged pupils in every 100, Attainment 8 is about 3.3 points lower.
For every 10 more pupils with SEN in every 100, it's about 1.3 points lower.
For every 10 more pupils with English as an additional language in every 100, it's about 1.3 points higher. Pupils learning English often catch up quickly.

From those, each school gets an expected score for its own pupils, and we compare that with its actual score. A gap of less than about 2.3 points either way is normal variation, so we call it "about what you'd expect". More than 5.7 points is "well" above or below.

What we found: schools where teachers stay

We put every secondary school's result-against-expected next to its teacher turnover – the share of its teachers who moved to another school or left state schools each year, averaged over three years (DfE school workforce census). Across 2,915 schools in England, split into four equal groups by turnover:

Teacher turnover	Typical turnover	Results vs expected	Did better than expected
Lowest turnover	9% a year	+1.4 points	40%
Lower-middle	14% a year	+0.6 points	35%
Upper-middle	18% a year	−0.3 points	27%
Highest turnover	26% a year	−1.2 points	26%

Results rise step by step as turnover falls. Pupils at schools where teachers stay longest do about a quarter of a grade better in every GCSE subject than pupils at schools where teachers leave most often (2.6 Attainment 8 points). That's after allowing for each school's pupils, so it isn't simply that schools in harder circumstances lose more teachers – they do, but the link is still there once that's taken into account.

A link isn't proof that one causes the other: losing teachers may hold results back, and a school that's struggling for other reasons (leadership, for example) may also lose more teachers. Nationally, turnover is fairly steady from year to year and teachers who move are replaced – but between schools it varies a lot, from under one teacher in ten a year to more than one in five. The green rings on the chart mark the lowest-turnover quarter.

What it can't tell you

These three things explain only about 38% of the differences between schools. Much of what makes a school stronger or weaker, and much about its pupils, isn't captured by any published figure.
It's one year of results. A single year group can be unusually strong or weak, so treat close calls as roughly equal.
It isn't an excuse for lower results. It shows how a school does compared with schools teaching similar pupils, so you can compare more fairly.
Grammar schools aren't compared, because they choose pupils by ability, which these figures don't measure.
We deliberately don't adjust for attendance or exclusions: those are partly down to the school itself.

Source: Department for Education, Key Stage 4 performance data (2024/25). Calculated by The School Companion.