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  • Kirkbie Kendal School
    Lound Road
    Kendal
    Cumbria
    LA9 7EQ
  • Head: Mr Mark Harris
  • T 01539 727422
  • F 01539 729243
  • E info@kksa.co.uk
  • W www.kirkbieken….cumbria.sch.uk
  • A state school for boys and girls aged from 11 to 18.
  • Boarding: No
  • Local authority: Cumbria
  • Pupils: 1,048; sixth formers: 132
  • Religion: None
  • Open days: November
  • Review: View The Good Schools Guide Review
  • Ofsted:
    • Latest Overall effectiveness Good 1
      • 16-19 study programmes Outstanding 2
      • Effectiveness of leadership and management Good 2
    • 1 Short inspection 18th December 2018
    • 2 Full inspection 23rd September 2014

    Short inspection reports only give an overall grade; you have to read the report itself to gauge whether the detailed grading from the earlier full inspection still stands.

  • Ofsted report: View the Ofsted report

What says..

The school has been significantly oversubscribed for many years, not least because of its academic record. It’s bucking the trend in language learning with more than half of pupils taking a language to at least GCSE. German and Spanish are available up to A level although...

Read review »

What the school says...

Converted to an academy 2011.

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What The Good Schools Guide says

Headteacher

Since September 2021, Mark Harris, previously deputy head since 2009. Before that, he worked at The Lakes School in Windermere, first as head of geography then assistant head. He has also taught geography at Crompton House School, Oldham.

Entrance

The official year 7 intake is 168 which the school is now firmly sticking to after a number of years where the entry has approached 190 as a result of oversubscription and appeals. School believes that keeping numbers around 1,000, including 200 in the sixth form, is optimum for delivering the quality of education they are known for. The clear message is that parents will need to put the school as their first choice to stand a chance of getting their child in to year 7.

For sixth form entry, applicants need five 5s...

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Please note: Independent schools frequently offer IGCSEs or other qualifications alongside or as an alternative to GCSE. The DfE does not record performance data for these exams so independent school GCSE data is frequently misleading; parents should check the results with the schools.

Who came from where

Who goes where

Interpreting catchment maps

The maps show in colour where the pupils at a school came from*. Red = most pupils to Blue = fewest.

Where the map is not coloured we have no record in the previous three years of any pupils being admitted from that location based on the options chosen.

For help and explanation of our catchment maps see: Catchment maps explained

Further reading

If there are more applicants to a school than it has places for, who gets in is determined by which applicants best fulfil the admissions criteria.

Admissions criteria are often complicated, and may change from year to year. The best source of information is usually the relevant local authority website, but once you have set your sights on a school it is a good idea to ask them how they see things panning out for the year that you are interested in.

Many schools admit children based on distance from the school or a fixed catchment area. For such schools, the cut-off distance will vary from year to year, especially if the school give priority to siblings, and the pattern will be of a central core with outliers (who will mostly be siblings). Schools that admit on the basis of academic or religious selection will have a much more scattered pattern.

*The coloured areas outlined in black are Census Output Areas. These are made up of a group of neighbouring postcodes, which accounts for their odd shapes. These provide an indication, but not a precise map, of the school’s catchment: always refer to local authority and school websites for precise information.

The 'hotter' the colour the more children have been admitted.

Children get into the school from here:

regularly
most years
quite often
infrequently
sometimes, but not in this year


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