Ferndown Upper School
Ferndown, BH22 9EY · Dorset local authority
Ferndown’s School Grade C− better than 18% of towns in England
What stands out about Ferndown Upper School
- Its own letter, B−: GCSE results better than 45% of England’s secondary schools
- Ofsted report card, March 2026: achievement strong standard, safeguarding met (shown, not graded)
- Progress 8 of +0.34 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 (BH22 9) sold for a median £387,500; Ferndown’s is £400,000
Results
DfE · GCSEs 2025/26, provisional · 278 pupilsEach bar is a group of England’s 3,224 graded secondary schools. The schools Ferndown Upper beats are shaded green.
Attainment 8 45.9
Average grade across 8 GCSEs ×10 · higher than 48% of schools · Dorset avg 44
Grade 5+ in English and maths 42%
A strong pass · higher than 41% of schools · Dorset avg 40%
Attainment 8, three years
The mark is England’s average that year
Progress 8, 2023/24
+0.34: 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 70 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.
Ferndown and Dorset, side by side
2025/26All 17 graded secondaries in Dorset. 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. Ferndown’s schools are coloured by their letter.
Show as a table
| School | Letter | Free school meals | Attainment 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Woodroffe School | B+ | 17% | 50 |
| The Purbeck School | B | 23% | 49 |
| Lytchett Minster School | B | 19% | 47.9 |
| The Thomas Hardye School | B | 19% | 47.8 |
| The Gryphon School | B− | 22% | 47.4 |
| Ferndown Upper School | B− | 21% | 45.9 |
| The Sir John Colfox Academy | B− | 23% | 45.9 |
| Beaminster School | C+ | 23% | 45.4 |
| Queen Elizabeth's School | C+ | 17% | 44.4 |
| The Blandford School | C | 21% | 43.2 |
| The Swanage School | C | 32% | 43.1 |
| Sturminster Newton High School | C | 30% | 41.4 |
| Shaftesbury School | D | 26% | 40.1 |
| Budmouth Academy Weymouth | C− | 27% | 40 |
| Wey Valley Academy | C− | 33% | 38.9 |
| All Saints' Church of England Academy | C− | 33% | 37.8 |
| Atlantic Academy Portland | D | 35% | 37.7 |
Who goes here
DfE school census, January 20251,169 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
Ferndown Upper 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 March 2026.
Before the report card: Ungraded inspection: School remains Good, December 2021.
Living near Ferndown Upper School
For families thinking of moving: what homes cost around the school, and the other schools close by.
Home prices in BH22 9, the school’s postcode sector
Ferndown property prices →Median sale price each year, 2010 to 2025
By type, the 36 months to August 2026
Homes in BH22 9 sell for a little under Ferndown’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
6 state schoolsLocation
Directions ↗
Ferndown, BH22 9EY
Ferndown Upper School: common questions
Is Ferndown Upper School a good school?
By its published results, about average: its GCSE results are better than 45% of England’s secondary schools (its letter is B−), with an Attainment 8 of 45.9 and 42% getting grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 47.3 and 47% for England’s schools. Ofsted: a report card in March 2026.
What is Ferndown Upper School’s Ofsted rating?
Its latest inspection (March 2026) gave a report card: achievement strong standard, safeguarding met. Ofsted stopped giving one-word overall grades in September 2024.
How much do houses cost near Ferndown Upper School?
Homes in its postcode sector, BH22 9, sold for a median £387,500 over the 36 months to August 2026 (580 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; Ferndown’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.