State-fundedAcademy sponsor led · Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole · BH15 4BQ
Secondary (no sixth form) · ages 11–16
The Cornerstone Academy is a state-funded school in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, teaching pupils aged 11 to 16.
| 2023–24 | 2022–23 | 2021–22 | 3-year average | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Progress 8 | -0.0348th percentile | +0.1966th percentile | +0.7895th percentile | +0.3175th percentile |
| Attainment 8 | 40.731st percentile | 42.136th percentile | 46.544th percentile | 43.137th percentile |
Progress 8 for 2023–24 was -0.03 — average, the 48th percentile nationally. Pupils here left with much the grades you would expect of pupils who had the same results at the end of primary school.
The 95% confidence interval for 2023–24 runs -0.30 to +0.24. 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 fallen in each of the years shown (2021–22 to 2023–24) — worth asking the school about at an open evening.
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.
| Grade 5+ in English & Maths | 31%28th percentile |
|---|---|
| EBacc average point score | 3.7642nd percentile |
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.
| 2023–24 | 2022–23 | 2021–22 | 3-year average | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower starters | +0.14 | +0.10 | +0.86 | +0.37 |
| Middle starters | -0.07 | +0.19 | +0.73 | +0.28 |
| Higher starters | -0.39 | — | — | -0.39 |
81 families named this school first for 96 places for 2026 entry — 0.84 first preferences per place.
| 2026 entry | 2025 entry | 2024 entry | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per place | 0.84× | 0.77× | 0.97× |
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.
| Overall absence | 13.7%5th percentile |
|---|---|
| Persistently absent pupils | 39.2%6th percentile |
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 above the norm.
School remains Good
The outcome of an ungraded inspection, which checks whether a school's previous grade still holds rather than issuing a new one.
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 The Cornerstone Academy 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.