Burnt Mill and Sir Frederick Gibberd both hit 80% for a grade 4 in English, above the national 71.4%. Three Harlow schools' own 2026 figures, compared.
Two Harlow secondary schools put 80% of their pupils through GCSE English at grade 4 or above this summer, and both did better than the national figure.
Burnt Mill Academy and Sir Frederick Gibberd College have each published their own 2026 results. Nationally, 71.4% of 16-year-olds in England taking GCSE English Language got a grade 4 or above, according to the Joint Council for Qualifications.
Maths is the other way round. Neither school matched the national 71.8%, and one went backwards on last year.
What each school published
Three Harlow schools put cohort figures on their own websites on results day, 20 August. This is what they say.
| School | English 4+ | English 5+ | Maths 4+ | Maths 5+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burnt Mill Academy | 80% | 67% | 67% | 50% |
| Sir Frederick Gibberd College | 80% | 62% | 70% | 49% |
| Mark Hall Academy | 60% | 44% | 54% | 44% |
| England, 16-year-olds (JCQ) | 71.4% | 55.0% | 71.8% | 53.8% |
A grade 4 is the standard pass. A grade 5 is the strong pass, and it is the one sixth forms and colleges tend to ask for.
One caution before you read too much into the bottom row. The school figures are the share of that school’s pupils. The JCQ figures are the share of entries by 16-year-olds across England. The two are close enough to be worth putting side by side, and far enough apart that a two-point gap means nothing. A twenty-point gap does.
Burnt Mill: up eight points in English
Burnt Mill Academy’s numbers moved the most. Set against its own 2025 results:
- English grade 4 or above: 73% to 80%
- English grade 5 or above: 59% to 67%
- Maths grade 4 or above: 68% to 67%
- Maths grade 5 or above: 49% to 50%
So the English improvement is real and large, and maths is flat.
This was the first Year 11 group to leave the academy’s new building. The school makes a point of it. “As the first Year 11 cohort to leave our brand-new school, they have helped establish a genuine culture for learning within it,” said assistant headteacher Emmett Gallagher, who added that younger pupils were already “embracing revision in our new school atrium”.
Headteacher Laura McGlashan said the school was “incredibly proud of our class of 2026 and the achievements they have made through their hard work, determination and resilience”. (Burnt Mill Academy, GCSE Results 2026)
Sir Frederick Gibberd: 100% in all three sciences
Sir Frederick Gibberd College published far more than the headline. Its figures were:
- 68% of pupils got a grade 4 or above in both English and maths, and 42% got a grade 5 or above in both
- 28% achieved the English Baccalaureate at grade 4 or above, 22% at grade 5 or above
- An Attainment 8 score of 44.5
By subject, the college reports 100% at grade 4 or above in Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Other subjects it names:
| Subject | Grade 4+ | Grade 5+ | Grade 7+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food Technology | 93.3% | not given | 40% |
| Music | 88% | not given | not given |
| Latin | 82% | 79% | not given |
| Ancient History | 80% | not given | not given |
| Geography | 74% | 62% | 29% |
| History | 69% | 60% | not given |
| Photography | 69% | not given | 32% |
Against its 2025 figures, English at grade 4 or above rose from 71% to 80% and the strong pass from 50% to 62%. Maths went from 68% to 70% at grade 4, and from 50% to 49% at grade 5.
The college opened in 2019, so this is only its fourth Year 11. Head of Year 11 Mr Elliott called it “an exceptional set of GCSE results”. (Sir Frederick Gibberd College, GCSE Results 2026)
Mark Hall: the gap is in maths, not English
Mark Hall Academy reported 60% at grade 4 or above in English and 54% in maths. Its strong pass rate is the same in both subjects, 44%, which is unusual: at every other school here the English strong pass is well ahead of the maths one.
The school did not publish a 2025 comparison, so there is no trend to report.
Head of school Victoria Butler singled out pupils who had done well “while overcoming significant adversity and personal challenges”, and said their results “tell stories of courage, perseverance and an extraordinary determination to succeed”. (Mark Hall Academy, GCSE Results 2026)
How Harlow’s schools compare
The schools that published nothing
We checked seven Harlow secondary school websites on 26 August. Four of them had no 2026 GCSE results post at all:
- Passmores Academy, whose newsfeed stops at 13 July
- Stewards Academy, same date
- St Mark’s West Essex Catholic School, whose news page runs to 17 July
- BMAT STEM Academy, which posted about results day but published no cohort figures, only individual grades
BMAT STEM Academy’s head of academy, Mitesh Thaker, said he was “incredibly proud of what our students have achieved”, naming “exceptional individual performances across Mathematics, Further Mathematics, the Sciences, Computer Science and Engineering”. (BMAT STEM Academy, GCSE Results 2026)
That is a choice each school makes. Nothing obliges a school to publish anything on results day, and the official figures come later.
What it means for you
If you are choosing a secondary school this autumn, results-day posts are the least reliable numbers you will see all year. They are unvalidated, they are chosen by the school, and they are not adjusted for the intake a school started with. A school taking lower-attaining pupils and moving them a long way can look worse on these figures than one that took higher attainers and moved them nowhere.
The number that does adjust for that is Progress 8, and none of the four schools published theirs. It arrives with the Department for Education’s performance tables in the autumn, alongside the validated Attainment 8 and grade 5+ figures for every school.
If your child missed a grade 4 in English or maths, they will normally have to keep studying it post-16. Resits sit in November, and the school or college a pupil moves to organises the entry, so ask about it at enrolment rather than after half term.
Open evenings have started going up. Stewards Academy has advertised its own for Thursday 24 September, 6pm to 9pm, with daytime tours on Thursdays through September and early October, and says no booking is needed for the evening.
Sources
- Burnt Mill Academy, GCSE Results 2026 and GCSE Results 2025 for its English and maths pass rates and the quotes from Laura McGlashan and Emmett Gallagher.
- Sir Frederick Gibberd College, GCSE Results 2026 and GCSE Results 2025 for the English, maths, EBacc, Attainment 8 and per-subject figures.
- Mark Hall Academy, GCSE Results 2026 for its pass rates and the quote from Victoria Butler.
- BMAT STEM Academy, GCSE Results 2026 for the quote from Mitesh Thaker.
- Joint Council for Qualifications, GCSE results Table 2, England, 2026 for the national figures for 16-year-olds: English Language 71.4% at grade 4 or above and 55.0% at grade 5 or above, Mathematics 71.8% and 53.8%.
- Passmores Academy, Stewards Academy and St Mark’s West Essex Catholic School news pages, checked 26 August 2026.
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