Marshland High School in top 20 percent nationally for pupils’ progress

A Fenland school is seeing such progress in its students that it’s been highlighted by the Department for Education as being in the top 20 percent of all state schools nationally.

Marshland High School, a member of the West Norfolk Academies Trust, had a Progress 8 score of 0.42 for its latest GCSE results, which means students make more academic progress from Year 7 to Year 11 than the vast majority of other state school cohorts.

As a result, the school has been visited by a team from Essex County Council as part of its project to visit the highest performers and gather best practices that can be used to guide and support schools in the county.

“The team spent the whole day exploring our school and spent time in many lessons, spoke and met students at break and lunchtime and met with many of our staff,” said headteacher Craig Jensen.

“At the end of the day, they expressed how very impressed they were with the ethos and culture of our school. They were particularly impressed with the exemplary conduct of our students, referring to the purposeful, calm, and harmonious atmosphere they witnessed in lessons,” he added.

The Progress 8 score is a measure to determine the success of secondary schools based on academic achievement relative to the ability of each student. It highlights the eight best-performing subjects for a student, including English and maths.

Marshland’s score means students make more academic progress from Year 7 to 11 than the majority of other state school students in England. It is much better than the local authority average of 0.01 and better than the national average of 0.03

The results, published by the Department for Education, showed Marshland High School is among the 16 percent of schools deemed above average. A further 16 percent were ‘well above average’ while 35 percent were average, 18 percent below average, and 15 percent well below average.

Marshland High School also has a higher number of pupils achieving grade 4 or above in English and maths exams than the national average, at 66 percent. The national figure is 65 percent and Norfolk is 64 per cent. It also has a higher percentage of pupils achieving at least one qualification, 99 percent, than both county or national figures of 97 percent.