Academic Performance & Exam Results
Understanding how well pupils achieve at The Bourne Academy requires looking at a combination of raw exam grades and the progress students make during their time at the school.
The figures below represent the outcomes for the 2024-2025 Year 11 cohort, which comprised 946 pupils. We contextualise these results by comparing them against the broader Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole (BCP) local authority averages.
Attainment 8
What it measures: Attainment 8 calculates the average achievement of pupils across eight core qualifications, including English and mathematics (which are double-weighted). It provides a broad picture of raw academic grades.
For 2024-2025, The Bourne Academy achieved an Attainment 8 score of 44.2. To put this into perspective, the average score across all BCP secondary schools (including highly selective grammars) is 50.77. When looking at the non-selective average in the area, the benchmark is 46.44.
Overall, this places the school 17 of 22 among all BCP secondaries with published data. Nationally, the England mainstream average for the prior year was 46.3.
It is also important to consider the "disadvantaged gap." At The Bourne Academy, pupils classified as disadvantaged achieved an average score of 41.8, compared to the overall school average of 44.2. Year-on-year, the school's overall Attainment 8 score rose from 41.3 in 2023-2024.
The Basics: English and Maths (9-5)
What it measures: The "Basics" metric tracks the percentage of students who achieve a strong pass (grade 5 or above) in both English and mathematics GCSEs.
At The Bourne Academy, 43.6% of the cohort achieved a grade 5 or higher in both vital subjects. A broader measure looking at standard passes (grade 4 or above) shows that 66% of students secured this foundational baseline. Historically, the school saw 36.8% of students achieve the 9-5 threshold in 2023-2024.
EBacc Average Point Score
What it measures: The English Baccalaureate (EBacc) is not a separate qualification, but a specific set of core academic subjects (English, maths, sciences, a language, and history or geography). The Average Point Score (APS) calculates how well pupils did across this specific suite of subjects.
The school's EBacc APS is 3.76, achieved with an EBacc entry rate of 28.2%. For context, the BCP non-selective average APS is 4.16, and The Bourne Academy ranks 17 of 22 locally on this specific metric.
Progress 8
What it measures: Unlike Attainment 8 (which just looks at final grades), Progress 8 measures how much value the school added. It compares a child's GCSE results to other children nationally who had the exact same SATs scores at the end of primary school. A score of 0.0 means pupils made the expected average progress. A positive score means they made more progress than peers nationally.
The most recent available Progress 8 score for The Bourne Academy is from the 2023-2024 cohort. The school achieved a score of -0.22 (with a confidence interval between -0.46 and 0.02).
This means that, on average, pupils at this school achieved 0.22 grades lower per subject than other pupils with similar starting points nationally. In comparison, the non-selective average across the BCP area for that same period was 0.11. The Bourne Academy ranks 19 of 21 across all BCP secondary schools for this metric.