Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre
Caversham, RG4 8LR · Reading local authority
Caversham’s School Grade A− better than 82% of towns in England
What stands out about Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre
- Its own letter, A: GCSE results better than 85% of England’s secondary schools
- 64% get grade 5 or above in English and maths, 17 points above England’s schools
- Over capacity: 1,537 pupils for 1,440 places
- 11% of pupils are eligible for free school meals (fewer than England’s 30%)
- Ofsted: Good, March 2024 (shown, not graded)
- 96% of families who put it first got a place for September 2026 (183 of 191)
- Progress 8 of +0.25 in 2023/24, the last year DfE published it: pupils did better at GCSE than pupils nationally with the same results at 11
- Homes in its postcode sector (RG4 8) sold for a median £420,750; Caversham’s is £465,000
Results
DfE · GCSEs 2025/26, provisional · 250 pupilsEach bar is a group of England’s 3,224 graded secondary schools. The schools Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre beats are shaded green.
Attainment 8 54.9
Average grade across 8 GCSEs ×10 · higher than 84% of schools · Reading avg 53.4
Grade 5+ in English and maths 64%
A strong pass · higher than 86% of schools · Reading avg 58%
Attainment 8, three years
The mark is England’s average that year
Progress 8, 2023/24
+0.25: above average. How pupils did at GCSE against pupils nationally with the same results at 11. Not published since 2023/24 (no Key Stage 2 tests in 2020 and 2021).
Disadvantaged pupils, 2025/26
Attainment 8 for the 24 pupils DfE counts as disadvantaged (free school meals in the last 6 years, or looked after) and the rest, beside England’s schools
England’s figures are of its graded mainstream state schools, each school counted once; grammar schools are included, which is why the right-hand tail is long. Small cohorts are suppressed.
How hard is it to get a place at Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre?
96% of the families who put it first got a place for September 2026.
Years when some first choices missed out: 2019 (64), 2020 (75), 2021 (80), 2022 (67), 2023 (24), 2024 (29), 2026 (8). The council runs the coordinated admissions; each school’s rules (siblings, distance, faith) decide who gets in. DfE doesn’t publish the furthest distance offered, so check the council’s admissions booklet for that. Glf Schools sets the admissions rules. Apply through Reading council’s coordinated admissions.
Outline = places offered · green = families who put it first · striped = more first choices than places
96% got their first choice
Caversham and Reading, side by side
2025/26All 9 graded secondaries in Reading. Schools with more pupils on free school meals usually score lower, so a school above the crowd for its free school meals is doing better than its intake predicts. Caversham’s schools are coloured by their letter.
Show as a table
| School | Letter | Free school meals | Attainment 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kendrick School | A+ | 11% | 82.4 |
| Reading School | A+ | 5% | 80.6 |
| Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre | A | 11% | 54.9 |
| Reading Girls' School | A− | 29% | 52.2 |
| Maiden Erlegh School in Reading | B− | 29% | 47.5 |
| Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School | B− | 22% | 46.3 |
| King's Academy Prospect | C | 41% | 39.7 |
| The WREN School | C− | 32% | 39.2 |
| Hartland High School | C− | 45% | 37.8 |
Who goes here
DfE school census, January 20251,545 pupils. SEN support is extra help in school for a special educational need; an EHC plan is the council’s legal plan for pupils who need more.
Girls and boys
Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre’s letter
Its own results against England’s schools, not the town’s School Grade.
How school letters are worked out
Each school’s measure is compared with every graded school in England of the same phase: for primaries, the share of pupils meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths (DfE’s three-year average); for secondaries, Attainment 8 and the share with grade 5 or above in English and maths, each turned into a z-score against England’s schools and averaged. The letter comes from the share of those schools it beats, in the same bands as every grade on the site. The same method gives U.S. schools their letters, against their own state.
Graded: England’s open mainstream state schools with published results (grammar schools included, which select by test). Not graded: special schools, alternative provision, nurseries, 16–19 colleges, UTCs and studio schools, Welsh schools. Ofsted plays no part.
Ofsted inspections
Shown, not graded: Ofsted is never part of a letter or the School Grade.
Ungraded inspection: School remains Good, March 2024.
Living near Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre
For families thinking of moving: what homes cost around the school, and the other schools close by.
Home prices in RG4 8, the school’s postcode sector
Caversham property prices →Median sale price each year, 2010 to 2025
By type, the 36 months to August 2026
Homes in RG4 8 sell for a little under Caversham’s typical price. HM Land Registry Price Paid, standard sales. Catchments aren’t published, so the postcode sector stands in for “around the school”.
Schools within 1.6 miles
11 state schoolsLocation
Directions ↗
Caversham, RG4 8LR
Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre: common questions
Is Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre a good school?
By its published results, well above average: its GCSE results are better than 85% of England’s secondary schools (its letter is A), with an Attainment 8 of 54.9 and 64% getting grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 47.3 and 47% for England’s schools. Ofsted: Good, March 2024.
How hard is it to get into Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre?
For September 2026, 191 families put Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre first and 183 of them were offered a place; 243 places were offered in all.
What is Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre’s Ofsted rating?
Its latest inspection outcome is Good (March 2024).
How much do houses cost near Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre?
Homes in its postcode sector, RG4 8, sold for a median £420,750 over the 36 months to August 2026 (516 sales).
Sources: DfE Get Information about Schools (16 October 2026), Key Stage 2 performance tables (2023–2025, three-year average) and Key Stage 4 (2025/26, provisional); Ofsted state-funded school inspections as at 30 September 2026. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Also: DfE Key Stage 4 performance, schools data (2023/24 and 2024/25 final, 2025/26 provisional) and Key Stage 2 performance tables 2024/25 by subject; DfE school census, January 2025; DfE school-level applications and offers, September 2019 to 2026 entry; HM Land Registry Price Paid by postcode sector, 2010 to August 2026.
A school’s letter is our own summary of its published results against England’s schools of the same phase; Caversham’s School Grade is a separate grade, built from the results of the schools in and around the town against other towns. Map: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.