United Kingdom / Regions / Dorset Council
Dorset Council
South West, England · population ~380k · 158 state-funded schools
Median full-time pay
ONS ASHE residence basis · 2025
Median house price
ONS HPSSA-9 · Year ending Sep 2025
Median monthly rent
ONS PIPR · 2026-03
Council tax (Band D)
MHCLG / Welsh Gov · 2026-27
Crime per 1,000
ONS PFA · Year ending Dec 2025
IMD score
MHCLG IoD · 2019
Schools Good+ (legacy)
Legacy 1-4 grades only · Ofsted Feb 2026 snapshot
Schools Outstanding
Of 125 legacy-graded schools · Ofsted Feb 2026 snapshot
State-funded schools in Dorset Council
158 schools listed by DfE GIAS, with current judgements from the Ofsted Feb 2026 Management Information snapshot. Among schools with a current legacy Ofsted 1-4 grade (125 of 158 here), 84.7% of pupils attend schools rated Good or Outstanding — combining full OEIF graded inspections and ungraded check-ins that confirmed the school remains at its last grade. A further 1 school (0.6% of the LA) has been re-inspected under Ofsted's new post-Sept-2024 report-card framework; those judgements appear separately on each school's row below.
The Last inspection column shows the most recent activity per school — graded inspection, check-in, or new-framework report card. Ofsted retired the single 1-4 grade in September 2024; new inspections produce multi-axis "report card" judgements (Leadership, Achievement, Curriculum, Behaviour, Personal development, Inclusion, Safeguarding) that aren't directly comparable to the legacy 1-4. Where a school has both an older 1-4 grade and a fresh report card, the 1-4 is shown for continuity but the report-card sub-judgments below it are the current finding. The "·" mark next to a grade indicates the value came from an ungraded check confirming the school's last full grade still applies.
Showing 20 of 158 schools.
| Links | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Thomas Hardye School | Secondary | 2,051 | Not graded | 04/02/2025 | OfstedWebsite |
Gillingham School | Secondary | 1,670 | Good | 10/05/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
Lytchett Minster School | Secondary | 1,590 | Good· | 22/02/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
The Gryphon School | Secondary | 1,555 | Good· | 21/06/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
Budmouth Academy Weymouth | Secondary | 1,499 | Requires Improvement | 19/03/2024 | OfstedWebsite |
Queen Elizabeth's School | Secondary | 1,452 | Requires Improvement | 03/10/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
Ferndown Upper School | Secondary | 1,169 | Good· | 08/12/2021 | OfstedWebsite |
The Blandford School | Secondary | 1,135 | Good | 23/04/2024 | OfstedWebsite |
The Purbeck School | Secondary | 1,028 | Not graded | 30/04/2025 | OfstedWebsite |
Wey Valley Academy | Secondary | 996 | Good | 11/10/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
The Woodroffe School | Secondary | 978 | Good | 06/12/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
Shaftesbury School | Secondary | 864 | Good | 07/03/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
The Sir John Colfox Academy | Secondary | 792 | Good· | 13/09/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
Atlantic Academy Portland | Secondary | 748 | Good | 19/01/2022 | OfstedWebsite |
St Osmund's Church of England Middle School | Secondary | 717 | Good | 05/07/2022 | OfstedWebsite |
All Saints' Church of England Academy | Secondary | 696 | Requires Improvement | 21/11/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
Beaminster School | Secondary | 679 | Good | 26/09/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
Sturminster Newton High School | Secondary | 617 | Not graded | — | OfstedWebsite |
Ferndown Middle School | Secondary | 613 | Good· | 21/06/2023 | OfstedWebsite |
St Michael's Church of England Middle School, Colehill | Secondary | 583 | Good· | 28/02/2024 | OfstedWebsite |
How we sourced this
Indicators: Pay (ONS ASHE residence), house price (ONS HPSSA-9 median for England + Wales, UK HPI mean for Scotland), rent (ONS PIPR newly-signed lets for E+W, Scot Gov 2-bed advertised median for Scotland), council tax (MHCLG England + Welsh Gov Wales), crime (ONS PFA, E+W only), IMD (MHCLG IoD 2019, England only), school quality (Ofsted % of pupils in schools currently rated under the legacy 1-4 framework as Good or Outstanding, combining full OEIF grades with ungraded check-ins — England only. Schools re-inspected under Ofsted's new post-Sept-2024 report-card framework are excludedfrom this denominator and shown separately on each school's row).
Schools: joined from DfE GIAS edubasealldata snapshot (2026-05-13, the canonical UK school registry) with Ofsted's Management Information snapshot (Feb 2026, current grades and pupil counts). Coordinates converted from OSGB36 (British National Grid) to WGS84 using the standard Helmert 7-parameter transformation.
Editorial position: we surface the uncomfortable facts (knife crime per 1,000, IMD deprivation, Band D bills) alongside the affordability story. No estate-agent gloss. Where methodologies differ across UK nations (rents, deprivation, council tax) we disclose the difference rather than silently merging.
Some indicators show "—" for Scotland / Wales / Northern Ireland because each nation publishes equivalents on a different methodology that explicitly cannot be cross-compared per official guidance.