Darwen Vale High School
Darwen, BB3 0AL · Blackburn with Darwen local authority
Darwen’s School Grade D better than 7% of towns in England
What stands out about Darwen Vale High School
- Its own letter, D: GCSE results near the bottom of England’s secondary schools (better than 13%)
- 28% get grade 5 or above in English and maths, 19 points below England’s schools
- Ofsted: Good, January 2024 (shown, not graded)
- 96% of families who put it first got a place for September 2026 (200 of 209)
- Progress 8 of -0.29 in 2023/24, the last year DfE published it: pupils did less well at GCSE than pupils nationally with the same results at 11
- Homes in its postcode sector (BB3 0) sold for a median £156,000; Darwen’s is £140,000
Results
DfE · GCSEs 2025/26, provisional · 163 pupilsEach bar is a group of England’s 3,224 graded secondary schools. The schools Darwen Vale High beats are shaded green.
Attainment 8 39
Average grade across 8 GCSEs ×10 · higher than 14% of schools · Blackburn with Darwen avg 46.4
Grade 5+ in English and maths 28%
A strong pass · higher than 12% of schools · Blackburn with Darwen avg 46%
Attainment 8, three years
The mark is England’s average that year
Progress 8, 2023/24
-0.29: below 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 66 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 Darwen Vale High School?
96% of the families who put it first got a place for September 2026.
Years when some first choices missed out: 2020 (2), 2021 (1), 2023 (31), 2024 (47), 2026 (9). 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. Aldridge Education 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
96% got their first choice
Darwen 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. Darwen’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 20251,071 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
Darwen Vale 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.
Graded inspection: Good, January 2024.
Living near Darwen Vale High School
For families thinking of moving: what homes cost around the school, and the other schools close by.
Home prices in BB3 0, the school’s postcode sector
Darwen property prices →Median sale price each year, 2010 to 2025
By type, the 36 months to August 2026
Homes in BB3 0 sell for a little over Darwen’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
13 state schoolsLocation
Directions ↗Darwen, BB3 0AL
Darwen Vale High School: common questions
Is Darwen Vale High School a good school?
By its published results, well below average: its GCSE results are better than 13% of England’s secondary schools (its letter is D), with an Attainment 8 of 39 and 28% getting grade 5 or above in English and maths, against 47.3 and 47% for England’s schools. Ofsted: Good, January 2024.
How hard is it to get into Darwen Vale High School?
For September 2026, 209 families put Darwen Vale High School first and 200 of them were offered a place; 233 places were offered in all.
What is Darwen Vale High School’s Ofsted rating?
Its latest inspection outcome is Good (January 2024).
How much do houses cost near Darwen Vale High School?
Homes in its postcode sector, BB3 0, sold for a median £156,000 over the 36 months to August 2026 (381 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; Darwen’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.