Blackburn Central High School
Blackburn, BB2 3HJ · Blackburn with Darwen local authority
Blackburn’s School Grade B better than 62% of towns in England
What stands out about Blackburn Central High School
- Its own letter, C: GCSE results better than 26% of England’s secondary schools
- 37% get grade 5 or above in English and maths, 10 points below England’s schools
- Over capacity: 1,015 pupils for 900 places
- 44% of pupils are eligible for free school meals (more than England’s 30%)
- Ofsted: Good, December 2022 (shown, not graded)
- Every family who put it first got a place for September 2026 (150 of 150)
- Progress 8 of -0.20 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 (BB2 3) sold for a median £150,000; Blackburn’s is £170,000
Results
DfE · GCSEs 2025/26, provisional · 172 pupilsEach bar is a group of England’s 3,224 graded secondary schools. The schools Blackburn Central High beats are shaded green.
Attainment 8 41
Average grade across 8 GCSEs ×10 · higher than 23% of schools · Blackburn with Darwen avg 46.4
Grade 5+ in English and maths 37%
A strong pass · higher than 30% of schools · Blackburn with Darwen avg 46%
Attainment 8, three years
The mark is England’s average that year
Progress 8, 2023/24
-0.20: 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 79 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 Blackburn Central High School?
Every family who put it first got a place for September 2026.
Years when some first choices missed out: 2019 (2), 2020 (1), 2021 (2), 2022 (1), 2024 (13). 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. Oak Learning Partnership sets the admissions rules. Apply through Blackburn with Darwen council’s coordinated admissions.
Outline = places offered · green = families who put it first · striped = more first choices than places
100% got their first choice
Blackburn and Blackburn with Darwen, side by side
2025/26All 11 graded secondaries in Blackburn with Darwen. 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. Blackburn’s schools are coloured by their letter.
Show as a table
| School | Letter | Free school meals | Attainment 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tauheedul Islam Girls' High School | A+ | 16% | 68.7 |
| Tauheedul Islam Boys' High School | A+ | 18% | 62.6 |
| St Wilfrid's Church of England Academy | B+ | 27% | 49.8 |
| Pleckgate High School | B− | 24% | 46.8 |
| St Bede's Roman Catholic High School, Blackburn | B | 21% | 45.4 |
| Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School | C | 23% | 44.3 |
| Blackburn Central High School | C | 44% | 41 |
| Witton Park Academy | C | 42% | 39.9 |
| Darwen Vale High School | D | 32% | 39 |
| Darwen Aldridge Community Academy | D | 36% | 36.8 |
| Our Lady and St John RC High School, a Voluntary Academy | D | 48% | 36.6 |
Who goes here
DfE school census, January 2025984 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
Blackburn Central High 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.
Ungraded inspection: School remains Good, December 2022.
Living near Blackburn Central High School
For families thinking of moving: what homes cost around the school, and the other schools close by.
Home prices in BB2 3, the school’s postcode sector
Blackburn property prices →Median sale price each year, 2010 to 2025
By type, the 36 months to August 2026
Homes in BB2 3 sell for a little under Blackburn’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
33 state schoolsLocation
Directions ↗Blackburn, BB2 3HJ
Blackburn Central High School: common questions
Is Blackburn Central High School a good school?
By its published results, below average: its GCSE results are better than 26% of England’s secondary schools (its letter is C), with an Attainment 8 of 41 and 37% getting grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 47.3 and 47% for England’s schools. Ofsted: Good, December 2022.
How hard is it to get into Blackburn Central High School?
For September 2026, 150 families put Blackburn Central High School first and all of them were offered a place; 197 places were offered in all.
What is Blackburn Central High School’s Ofsted rating?
Its latest inspection outcome is Good (December 2022).
How much do houses cost near Blackburn Central High School?
Homes in its postcode sector, BB2 3, sold for a median £150,000 over the 36 months to August 2026 (363 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; Blackburn’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.