Guest, Sign inJoin
C+

Willowfield School

SecondaryAges 11–16Community

Waltham Forest, E17 6ND · Waltham Forest local authority

Waltham Forest’s School Grade A better than 90% of towns in England

Its letter
38%
of England’s secondaries have lower GCSE results
Getting in
124/124
first choices offered a place, 2026 (England: 84%)
How full
1,035 pupils
99% of its 1,050 places
Free school meals
35%
35 in 100 pupils eligible · outlined square = England’s schools (30)
The gist

What stands out about Willowfield School

  • Its own letter, C+: GCSE results better than 38% of England’s secondary schools
  • Ofsted report card, January 2026: achievement expected standard, safeguarding met (shown, not graded)
  • Every family who put it first got a place for September 2026 (124 of 124)
  • Progress 8 of -0.02 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 (E17 6) sold for a median £550,000; Waltham Forest’s is £530,000

Results

DfE · GCSEs 2025/26, provisional · 207 pupils

Each bar is a group of England’s 3,224 graded secondary schools. The schools Willowfield beats are shaded green.

Attainment 8 43.5

Average grade across 8 GCSEs ×10 · higher than 35% of schools · Waltham Forest avg 48.8

20304050607080England avg 47.3Willowfield 43.5

Grade 5+ in English and maths 42%

A strong pass · higher than 42% of schools · Waltham Forest avg 51%

0%20%40%60%80%100%England avg 47.3%Willowfield 42%

Attainment 8, three years

The mark is England’s average that year

2023/24
48.1
2024/25
46.1
2025/26
43.5

Progress 8, 2023/24

−1 behind0 = national+1 ahead

-0.02: 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 82 pupils DfE counts as disadvantaged (free school meals in the last 6 years, or looked after) and the rest, beside England’s schools

Disadvantaged
35.9England 38.6
Not disadvantaged
48.5England 50.6
Grade 4 or above in English and maths59%
England’s schools 66% · Waltham Forest 68% · a standard pass

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.

Getting in

How hard is it to get a place at Willowfield School?

Every family who put it first got a place for September 2026.

124
families put it first for September 2026
200
places offered
100%
of first choices offered a place (England’s secondaries: 84%)
First choices and places, by year of entry
20192020202120222023202420252026
Families who put it firstPlaces offered
Red figures: first choices not offered a place

Years when some first choices missed out: 2019 (65), 2020 (52), 2021 (35), 2022 (14), 2023 (25), 2024 (15). 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. Waltham Forest council sets the admissions rules. Apply through Waltham Forest council’s coordinated admissions.

Demand for secondary schools in Waltham Forest, September 2026

Outline = places offered · green = families who put it first · striped = more first choices than places · the 10 most in demand

1.90 per place
48% got their first choice
1.40 per place
65% got their first choice
1.34 per place
70% got their first choice
1.29 per place
67% got their first choice
1.15 per place
78% got their first choice
1.05 per place
81% got their first choice
1.04 per place
77% got their first choice
1.01 per place
84% got their first choice
0.95 per place
82% got their first choice
Willowfield
0.62 per place
100% got their first choice

Waltham Forest and Waltham Forest, side by side

2025/26

All 17 graded secondaries in Waltham Forest. 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. Waltham Forest’s schools are coloured by their letter.

35404550556010%20%30%40%50%Pupils eligible for free school meals →Attainment 8 →Willowfield
ABCDElsewhere in Waltham ForestWillowfield
Show as a table
SchoolLetterFree school mealsAttainment 8
Eden Girls' School, Waltham ForestA+33%64.2
Walthamstow School for GirlsA26%57.9
Norlington School and 6th FormA−31%54.1
Walthamstow AcademyA−43%52.9
Connaught School for GirlsB+40%50.4
George Mitchell SchoolB+38%50.2
Frederick Bremer SchoolB+34%49.7
Leytonstone SchoolB+26%49.7
Highams Park SchoolB+25%49.1
Buxton SchoolB42%48.6
Holy Family Catholic SchoolB34%48.1
Chingford Foundation SchoolB−28%45.9
Heathcote School & Science CollegeC+28%44
Willowfield SchoolC+35%43.5
South Chingford Foundation SchoolC40%42.8
Lammas SchoolC−43%41
Kelmscott SchoolD37%37.5

Who goes here

DfE school census, January 2025

1,004 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.

SEN support
19.8%England 14%
EHC plan
4.5%England 3.2%
English as an additional language
26.4%England 19%
Free school meals in the last 6 years
33.8%England 29.6%

Girls and boys

Girls 38%Boys 62%
Its letter

Willowfield School’s letter

Its own results against England’s schools, not the town’s School Grade.

Secondary: Attainment 8 and grade 5+ English and maths C+Better than 38% of 3,224 schools
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.

A+ 95+A 85–94A− 75–84B+ 65–74B 55–64B− 45–54C+ 35–44C 25–34C− 15–24D 5–14D− 0–4

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

Ofsted inspections

Shown, not graded: Ofsted is never part of a letter or the School Grade.

Report card, inspection starting January 2026.

SafeguardingMet
AchievementExpected standard
Curriculum and teachingExpected standard
InclusionExpected standard
Attendance and behaviourExpected standard
Personal development and well-beingExpected standard
Leadership and governanceExpected standard

Before the report card: Ungraded inspection: School remains Good, October 2021.

The full reports on Ofsted ↗

Living nearby

Living near Willowfield School

For families thinking of moving: what homes cost around the school, and the other schools close by.

Home prices in E17 6, the school’s postcode sector

Waltham Forest property prices →
£550,000
median sale, 651 sales in 36 months · Waltham Forest £530,000

Median sale price each year, 2010 to 2025

£100K£200K£300K£400K£500K£600K2010201520202025E17 6Waltham Forest
E17 6Waltham Forest

By type, the 36 months to August 2026

Semi-detached
£660K
Terraced
£713K
Flat
£405K
E17 6Waltham Forest

Homes in E17 6 sell for a little over Waltham Forest’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

48 state schools
0.5 mi1 mi1.5 miNA−B−B+C−CC−B−BA−AB+A+DAA−B−CADBB+C−B−A−ACA+AD−A+ABBA−B−B+AABA+AA+A+C−B−B−C+Willowfield School
ABCDNo letterPrimarySecondary / all-through

Waltham Forest, E17 6ND

Willowfield School: common questions

Is Willowfield School a good school?

By its published results, below average: its GCSE results are better than 38% of England’s secondary schools (its letter is C+), with an Attainment 8 of 43.5 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 January 2026.

How hard is it to get into Willowfield School?

For September 2026, 124 families put Willowfield School first and all of them were offered a place; 200 places were offered in all.

What is Willowfield School’s Ofsted rating?

Its latest inspection (January 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 Willowfield School?

Homes in its postcode sector, E17 6, sold for a median £550,000 over the 36 months to August 2026 (651 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; Waltham Forest’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.