The Queen Katherine School
Kendal, LA9 6PJ · Westmorland and Furness local authority
Kendal’s School Grade B+ better than 71% of towns in England
What stands out about The Queen Katherine School
- Its own letter, B: GCSE results better than 57% of England’s secondary schools
- Room to spare: 910 pupils for 1,465 places
- 17% of pupils are eligible for free school meals (fewer than England’s 30%)
- Ofsted report card, May 2026: achievement expected standard, safeguarding met (shown, not graded)
- 99% of families who put it first got a place for September 2026 (118 of 119)
- Progress 8 of +0.08 in 2023/24, the last year DfE published it: pupils did about as well at GCSE as pupils nationally with the same results at 11
- Homes in its postcode sector (LA9 6) sold for a median £254,500; Kendal’s is £260,000
Results
DfE · GCSEs 2025/26, provisional · 122 pupilsEach bar is a group of England’s 3,224 graded secondary schools. The schools The Queen Katherine beats are shaded green.
Attainment 8 49.3
Average grade across 8 GCSEs ×10 · higher than 67% of schools · Westmorland and Furness avg 45.1
Grade 5+ in English and maths 44%
A strong pass · higher than 47% of schools · Westmorland and Furness avg 41%
Attainment 8, three years
The mark is England’s average that year
Progress 8, 2023/24
+0.08: about 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 23 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 The Queen Katherine School?
99% of the families who put it first got a place for September 2026.
Years when some first choices missed out: 2024 (1), 2026 (1). 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. Cumbria Education Trust sets the admissions rules. Apply through Westmorland and Furness council’s coordinated admissions.
Outline = places offered · green = families who put it first · striped = more first choices than places
99% got their first choice
Kendal and Westmorland and Furness, side by side
2025/26All 19 graded secondaries in Westmorland and Furness. 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. Kendal’s schools are coloured by their letter.
Show as a table
| School | Letter | Free school meals | Attainment 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Penrith | A+ | 5% | 65.2 |
| Queen Elizabeth School | A | 8% | 58.4 |
| Kirkby Stephen Grammar School | A− | 21% | 50.2 |
| Cartmel Priory CofE School | B | 14% | 49.8 |
| The Queen Katherine School | B | 17% | 49.3 |
| Ulverston Victoria High School | B− | 16% | 48.3 |
| Kirkbie Kendal School | B | 16% | 47.5 |
| John Ruskin School | C+ | 11% | 46 |
| Settlebeck School | B− | 13% | 45.7 |
| Dallam School | C+ | 15% | 44.1 |
| The Lakes School | C | 17% | 42.1 |
| Dowdales School | C− | 21% | 41.1 |
| Furness Academy | C− | 29% | 40.8 |
| Appleby Grammar School | C− | 18% | 40.7 |
| Walney Academy | C− | 28% | 40.5 |
| Ullswater Community College | C− | 21% | 39.5 |
| Chetwynde School | D | 17% | 38.5 |
| St Bernards Catholic High School, Barrow | C− | 28% | 38.5 |
| Samuel King's School | D− | 19% | 30.2 |
Who goes here
DfE school census, January 2025917 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
The Queen Katherine School’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.
Report card, inspection starting May 2026.
Before the report card: Graded inspection: Good, March 2022.
Living near The Queen Katherine School
For families thinking of moving: what homes cost around the school, and the other schools close by.
Home prices in LA9 6, the school’s postcode sector
Kendal property prices →Median sale price each year, 2010 to 2025
By type, the 36 months to August 2026
Homes in LA9 6 sell for about the same as Kendal’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
7 state schoolsLocation
Directions ↗
Kendal, LA9 6PJ
The Queen Katherine School: common questions
Is The Queen Katherine School a good school?
By its published results, above average: its GCSE results are better than 57% of England’s secondary schools (its letter is B), with an Attainment 8 of 49.3 and 44% getting grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 47.3 and 47% for England’s schools. Ofsted: a report card in May 2026.
How hard is it to get into The Queen Katherine School?
For September 2026, 119 families put The Queen Katherine School first and 118 of them were offered a place; 124 places were offered in all.
What is The Queen Katherine School’s Ofsted rating?
Its latest inspection (May 2026) gave a report card: achievement expected standard, safeguarding met. Ofsted stopped giving one-word overall grades in September 2024.
How much do houses cost near The Queen Katherine School?
Homes in its postcode sector, LA9 6, sold for a median £254,500 over the 36 months to August 2026 (354 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; Kendal’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.