Hollingworth Academy Review 2026: Large 11–16 comprehensive with clear values and strong enrichment

Clear routines, a big cohort, and a distinctive student culture shape daily life here. The academy’s three core values, Respect, Responsibility and Resilience, run through behaviour expectations and the wider personal development offer, including a structured house system with constellation house names and points-based rewards.

Leadership is stable, Mr R McGinty has been headteacher since 01 September 2022. The most recent Ofsted inspection (December 2022) judged the school Good overall, with Good judgements across all main areas.

Hollingworth Academy presents itself as a comprehensive school serving its local area, while also making a point of formalising culture. Students and staff are assigned to one of four houses, Altair, Pegasus, Orion, and Sirius, chosen through a student vote, then used as the organising structure for competitions and rewards across the year. The house narrative is not just branding, it includes an annual points tally and a year-end trophy, with published recent winners (for example, Pegasus in 2022/23 and Orion in 2023/24).

The academy’s values are reinforced in multiple places, including behaviour guidance and family-facing documentation. The values are framed as practical expectations: how students speak to one another, how they move around the site, how they treat learning time, and how they take responsibility for their choices. For families, the clearest signal is consistency, the language is repeated and aligned across the headteacher’s welcome, the prospectus, and the external evaluation evidence.

The school also leans into “personal development” as a deliberate strand rather than a general promise. The RISE curriculum is presented as a structured programme alongside academic study, and the house system is used to create identity and participation routes for students who might not naturally join sports teams or performance groups.

This is an 11–16 school, so the headline public results are GCSE-focused rather than sixth form outcomes.

Ranked 2,458th in England and 2nd in Rochdale for GCSE outcomes (FindMySchool ranking based on official data)

This positioning reflects solid performance overall, in line with the middle 35% of schools in England (25th to 60th percentile).

On attainment, the academy’s Attainment 8 score is 45.9. Progress 8 is -0.02, which is effectively close to the England baseline and suggests outcomes are broadly in line with prior attainment, rather than consistently adding or losing large amounts of progress across the cohort.

The EBacc picture is more mixed. 6% of pupils achieved grade 5 or above across the EBacc components, and the average EBacc point score is 3.9, compared with an England average of 4.08. This tends to indicate either lower uptake of the full EBacc suite, weaker outcomes within it, or both, and it matters most for families who want a strongly language-heavy Key Stage 4 pathway.

Parents comparing nearby schools should use the FindMySchool Local Hub and the Comparison Tool to review GCSE indicators side-by-side, rather than relying on a single headline.

Curriculum planning is described as broad and carefully sequenced from Years 7 to 11, with an emphasis on building knowledge cumulatively and revisiting prior content so students retain what they learn. A notable strength is support for a mixed set of post-14 interests. In Key Stage 4, students can select from academic and vocational options, and specialist facilities are referenced for pathways such as hair and beauty, construction, and hospitality.

At the same time, the school is not presented as uniform across every subject area. External evaluation points to variability in how consistently the taught curriculum ambition is translated into lesson design, particularly for some students who need work matched more precisely to the intended curriculum breadth, including some pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. For families, the practical implication is to ask how the academy supports students who thrive with structure but need high-quality scaffolding to meet ambitious subject expectations.

For creative subjects, Performing Arts is positioned as a core development route for confidence and communication, spanning dance, drama, and music. This aligns well with the wider enrichment model, which includes both performance-based clubs and a clear timetable for structured interventions.

With provision ending at 16, the key transition is post-GCSE. In practice, this means students typically progress to local sixth form colleges, school sixth forms, apprenticeships, and training routes, depending on grades and interests. The academy places explicit weight on careers education and employer engagement, including local partnership work and awards-linked careers activity reported externally.

The most useful lens for families is to view the 11–16 model as a deliberate choice. It can suit students who want a focused GCSE phase and then a fresh start at 16, either because they want a specialist college environment or because they want a broader post-16 menu than a small sixth form can offer. It can be less convenient for families who strongly prefer continuity through to Year 13.

Hollingworth Academy is its own admissions authority through the Hollingworth Learning Trust, with applications coordinated via Rochdale Borough Council for the Year 7 intake. The published admissions number (PAN) is 270 for Year 7.

For September 2026 entry, the policy sets out a clear timeline:

• Applications close on 31 October 2025.

• Offers are communicated on the national offer date, 01 March 2026, or the next working day.

Oversubscription is handled through a priority order including looked-after and previously looked-after children, exceptional medical or welfare reasons, sibling priority, service premium, children of staff, then other children. Distance is used as the tie-breaker when categories are oversubscribed, measured as the shortest walking route from home to the academy gates, using GPS coordinates from Ordnance Survey AddressBase.

Open evenings provide a practical way to test fit. The published Year 6 open evening in October 2025 ran without booking, which suggests open events are typically held in early October each year, with arrival flexible across a set time window. Families who are distance-sensitive should use the FindMySchool Map Search to understand how their home compares with recent patterns in the local area, then confirm the latest local authority allocation detail before relying on a place.

The academy’s pastoral message is straightforward: firm expectations, clear routines, and staff visibility. External evaluation supports that students report strong relationships with staff, that they feel safe, and that bullying is described as rare with issues addressed quickly when they arise.

Operationally, safeguarding and student support are visibly structured within senior leadership. The published leadership contacts include a designated safeguarding lead within the assistant headteacher team, and a named special educational needs and disabilities coordinator. For parents, this is useful because it indicates clear ownership of safeguarding and SEND rather than informal delegation.

Expectations extend beyond behaviour into uniform, equipment, and punctuality norms. Guidance for parents emphasises routine and compliance, which tends to suit students who benefit from clarity and predictable boundaries, and can be harder for those who resist formal rules unless families and school are aligned on the rationale.

The enrichment offer is unusually specific because the academy publishes a termly programme of clubs, interventions, and before-and-after school sessions. For Spring 2026, examples include Debate Club, Dungeons & Dragons Club, STEM (Science) Club, Rock Band, Vocal Group, and Urdu Club, alongside sport options such as Team Trampolining, Dodgeball, and year-group football sessions.

This matters because it shows a breadth beyond traditional “sport plus drama”. The list includes interest-led options (Debate Club, Dungeons & Dragons), identity and language (Urdu Club), and skill-building (Photography Club and structured homework clubs). The implication is that students who are not naturally drawn to competitive sport still have credible participation routes, which can improve belonging, attendance, and confidence.

It also includes targeted support. Before-school and after-school homework clubs run as routine provision, and Year 11 intervention sessions appear as structured, invite-based or targeted sessions in core areas. For many families, this is a practical positive: support is embedded into the school week, not treated as an optional extra that requires external tuition.

Facilities are positioned as community assets as well as student resources, including an indoor sports hall and a floodlit 3G all-weather pitch. This typically correlates with strong curricular PE capacity and reliable winter training space for clubs and teams.

The academy opens to students at 8.15am. The school day begins at 8.40am and finishes at 3.10pm, equating to 32.5 hours per week. Before-school and after-school activities extend the day for students who participate, with published sessions including an early homework club (from 8.15am on the termly programme) and many clubs running to 4.00pm or later.

Transport-wise, the location in Milnrow typically suits families using local bus routes and the wider Rochdale travel network; the academy also provides family-facing guidance on punctuality routines and travel expectations. Families should check travel time at the times students actually commute, as congestion patterns can differ significantly from mid-day driving.

• Large-scale setting. Ofsted lists around 1,339 pupils against a capacity of 1,350, so this is a substantial school with busy corridors and large year groups. This suits many students, but some will prefer a smaller environment.

• Post-16 transition is compulsory. With no sixth form, every student moves on after GCSEs. This can be positive for a fresh start, but it does remove continuity for families who prefer one school through to Year 13.

• EBacc pathway is not the dominant story. EBacc outcomes in the available dataset point to a limited or mixed EBacc profile. Families prioritising a language-heavy GCSE package should ask how languages are promoted and supported through Key Stage 4.

• Consistency varies by subject. External evaluation highlights that, in a small number of subjects, learning activities do not always match curriculum ambition, which can affect some learners, including some pupils with SEND.

Hollingworth Academy is a large, values-led 11–16 comprehensive with clear routines, a well-defined house culture, and a published enrichment programme that goes well beyond the usual headline clubs. The GCSE performance profile is broadly middle-of-the-pack nationally, with particularly clear evidence of structured support and strong participation routes outside lessons.

It best suits families who want a big-school experience with firm expectations, plentiful extracurricular options, and a planned transition at 16 into college, training, or another sixth form setting.