Sir Thomas Rich's School
Gloucester, GL2 0LF · Gloucestershire local authority
Gloucester’s School Grade B better than 64% of towns in England
What stands out about Sir Thomas Rich's School
- Its own letter, A+: GCSE results better than 98% of England’s secondary schools
- 96% get grade 5 or above in English and maths, 49 points above England’s schools
- A grammar school: it selects pupils by an entrance test (the 11-plus), which lifts its results
- Over capacity: 1,240 pupils for 1,150 places
- 6% of pupils are eligible for free school meals (fewer than England’s 30%)
- Ofsted report card, December 2025: achievement strong standard, safeguarding met (shown, not graded)
- 65% of families who put it first got a place for September 2026 (126 of 194)
- Progress 8 of +0.91 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 (GL2 0) sold for a median £318,500; Gloucester’s is £255,000
Results
DfE · GCSEs 2025/26, provisional · 155 pupilsEach bar is a group of England’s 3,224 graded secondary schools. The schools Sir Thomas Rich's beats are shaded green.
Attainment 8 75.2
Average grade across 8 GCSEs ×10 · higher than 98% of schools · Gloucestershire avg 51.5
Grade 5+ in English and maths 96%
A strong pass · higher than 97% of schools · Gloucestershire avg 54%
Attainment 8, three years
The mark is England’s average that year
Progress 8, 2023/24
+0.91: 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).
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 Sir Thomas Rich's School?
65% of the families who put it first got a place for September 2026.
Years when some first choices missed out: 2019 (44), 2020 (22), 2021 (157), 2022 (71), 2023 (100), 2024 (104), 2025 (73), 2026 (68). 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. Sir Thomas Rich'S School sets the admissions rules. Apply through Gloucestershire council’s coordinated admissions.
Outline = places offered · green = families who put it first · striped = more first choices than places
65% got their first choice
Gloucester and Gloucestershire, side by side
2025/26All 40 graded secondaries in Gloucestershire. 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. Gloucester’s schools are coloured by their letter.
Show as a table
| School | Letter | Free school meals | Attainment 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pate's Grammar School | A+ | 6% | 82.4 |
| Sir Thomas Rich's School | A+ | 6% | 75.2 |
| Denmark Road High School | A+ | 6% | 74.8 |
| Stroud High School | A+ | 3% | 74.7 |
| The Crypt School | A+ | 4% | 73.3 |
| Marling School | A+ | 4% | 73.2 |
| Ribston Hall High School | A+ | 8% | 67.6 |
| Balcarras School | A | 6% | 62.1 |
| The High School Leckhampton | A | 10% | 59.7 |
| The Cotswold Academy | A | 15% | 58.7 |
| Farmor's School | A | 13% | 54.8 |
| Churchdown School | A− | 18% | 53.3 |
| Cirencester Deer Park School | A− | 16% | 51.4 |
| Katharine Lady Berkeley's School | B+ | 11% | 50.7 |
| Chipping Campden School | B+ | 20% | 50.4 |
| Cheltenham Bournside School and Sixth Form Centre | B | 24% | 49.6 |
| Cleeve School | B+ | 21% | 49.4 |
| Henley Bank High School | B | 32% | 48.9 |
| Severn Vale School | B | 23% | 48.7 |
| Cirencester Kingshill School | B+ | 20% | 48.4 |
| Thomas Keble School | B− | 18% | 47.3 |
| Five Acres High School | B− | 28% | 45.9 |
| Maidenhill School | B | 26% | 45.6 |
| Chosen Hill School | C+ | 18% | 45.1 |
| Rednock School | C+ | 22% | 44.8 |
| Holmleigh Park High School | C+ | 35% | 44.5 |
| Pittville School | C | 35% | 44.2 |
| Dene Magna and Sixth Form | C | 22% | 44.1 |
| Winchcombe School | C+ | 22% | 44 |
| Barnwood Park School | C+ | 36% | 43.4 |
| The Dean Academy | C | 34% | 43.1 |
| Sir William Romney's School | C− | 22% | 42.4 |
| Newent Community School and Sixth Form Centre | C | 24% | 42.4 |
| Wyedean School and Sixth Form Centre | C | 17% | 41.9 |
| Gloucester Academy | C | 42% | 41.5 |
| Archway School | D | 29% | 41.4 |
| St Peter's Catholic High School and Sixth Form Centre | C− | 25% | 40.9 |
| Tewkesbury Academy | D | 25% | 38.4 |
| All Saints' Academy, Cheltenham | D | 39% | 37.7 |
| SGS Forest High School | D− | 37% | 32.9 |
Who goes here
DfE school census, January 20251,249 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
Sir Thomas Rich's 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 December 2025.
Before the report card: Graded inspection: Good, October 2021.
Living near Sir Thomas Rich's School
For families thinking of moving: what homes cost around the school, and the other schools close by.
Home prices in GL2 0, the school’s postcode sector
Gloucester property prices →Median sale price each year, 2010 to 2025
By type, the 36 months to August 2026
Homes in GL2 0 sell for well over Gloucester’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
22 state schoolsLocation
Directions ↗
Gloucester, GL2 0LF
Sir Thomas Rich's School: common questions
Is Sir Thomas Rich's School a good school?
By its published results, well above average: its GCSE results are better than 98% of England’s secondary schools (its letter is A+), with an Attainment 8 of 75.2 and 96% getting grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 47.3 and 47% for England’s schools. Ofsted: a report card in December 2025.
How hard is it to get into Sir Thomas Rich's School?
For September 2026, 194 families put Sir Thomas Rich's School first and 126 of them were offered a place; 150 places were offered in all.
What is Sir Thomas Rich's School’s Ofsted rating?
Its latest inspection (December 2025) 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 Sir Thomas Rich's School?
Homes in its postcode sector, GL2 0, sold for a median £318,500 over the 36 months to August 2026 (484 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; Gloucester’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.