St Mary's Catholic High School

State-fundedVoluntary aided school · Croydon · CR9 2EE · Roman Catholic

Secondary with sixth form · ages 11–19

St Mary's Catholic High School is a state-funded school in Croydon, teaching pupils aged 11 to 19. It has a religious character (Roman Catholic).

GCSE results

Progress 8 for 2023–24 was +0.29 — above average, the 72nd percentile nationally. On average pupils left with grades about 0.29 of a grade per subject higher than pupils across England who had the same results at the end of primary school.

The 95% confidence interval for 2023–24 runs -0.03 to +0.60. That range includes zero, so on this year's figures the school cannot be told apart from an average one — treat small differences between schools with care. It has moved around a good deal across the years shown, from +0.00 to +0.42. The three-year average is the steadier number to judge it on.

Progress here runs well ahead of attainment. Pupils arrive behind and are moved further than similar starters elsewhere, but still leave with grades below what many other schools post. If you compare schools on raw grades alone you will underrate this one.

Attainment 8 is the average grade pupils leave with across eight GCSEs; it tells you where they ended up, and tracks the intake a school admits as much as anything the school does. Progress 8 compares those grades with pupils nationally who had the same results at the end of primary school, so it is the better measure of what a school added.

Progress 8 by where pupils started

A school can post a respectable overall score while coasting one group and carrying the average on another. The row that matters to you is the one your own child sits in.

How hard it is to get in

45 families named this school first for 108 places for 2026 entry — 0.42 first preferences per place.

This is how sought-after a school is, not how good it is — demand tracks house prices and older siblings as much as anything a school does. It is also not your chance of getting in: a school with two applicants per place can still admit everyone living near it, while a less popular school a mile further away turns you down. Distance is usually what decides it, and that depends on your address.

Attendance

Absence is worth reading next to results: it is a plainer signal of whether pupils are turning up and engaged than any grade average. Across the schools in this dataset the overall absence rate averages 9.0%, so this school is below the norm.

Ofsted

Achievement: Needs attention · Behaviour: Expected standard · Leadership: Expected standard

Inspected under Ofsted's 2025 report cards, which replaced the single overall grade with a grade per area on a five-point scale from Exceptional to Urgent improvement.

What these figures don't tell you

The GCSE results here are for 2023–24 and earlier, which describes pupils who have already left. Nothing on this page covers where pupils go next, A-level or sixth-form results, pastoral care, how far a school pushes music, sport or drama, or how it feels to walk around — and those are the things parents most often say settled it. Visit at an open evening before you rank a school.

Nor is any of it a prediction of a place. Whether your child is offered one depends on the school's admission criteria and, most often, on how far you live from the gate.

See St Mary's Catholic High School on the map →Compare it with every other secondary school nearby, filter on results, admissions pressure or Ofsted, and sort the schools closest to your own postcode.

Elsewhere on the web

• The school's own website
• DfE compare school performance
• Ofsted reports
• GIAS record (the official registry entry)
• Google Maps