Information for University Admissions Tutors

Wood Green Academy is a mixed 11-19 National Support School with Mathematics, Computing and Sport as its specialist subjects, located in the Borough of Sandwell in the heart of the Black Country. Currently, our Sixth Form of some 250 students offers a mix of two year linear GCEs and vocational courses; it is the school policy not to offer the AS option in the case of the linear courses, internal assessments being held instead at the end of Year 12.

Our catchment area covering much of the northern part of Sandwell and parts of the neighbouring borough Walsall includes pockets of high economic and social deprivation; 31% of our pupils qualifying for the Pupil Premium, 17.4% eligible for Free School Meals, while 30.6% have English as an additional language. Achievement in Attainment 8 in 2022 was 48.12. However, the school takes great pride in its results we are able to achieve at both GCSE and GCE Level and at the last Ofsted inspection in February 2020 was rated ‘Good’.

The school was hit badly by the Covid lockdowns in 2020 and 2021which have continued to have an impact on our students, many of whom did see a drop in their levels of achievement over that time, especially the current Year 13 who did not sit their GCSEs in Year 11 and who were instead awarded Centre Assessed Grades, calculated using raw marks from within departments with exam board grade boundaries applied; grades being moderated at both departmental and at the whole school level. Past data was used to triangulate grades to past predictions and mock exam scores at student level and we are confident that our approach was both rigorous and accurate. The predicted grades used with our references are based on the students’ performance in exams held at the end of the summer term in 2022. Again, we are confident that our process in reaching these grades was as rigorous as we could make it, but it must also be remembered that these were the first examinations that these students had had the opportunity to take.

That our method of calculating those grades was robust has been confirmed by our experience of the Year 13 cohort of 2021-22 whose average grade at GCE was B-, very close to the 2018-19 average of C, this being the last year for which we have reliable figures.