Welcome

Cardinal Allen is a progressive, exciting and happy school - a school in which everyone is challenged to be all they can be.

The school is named after Cardinal William Allen, a Lancashire man, who was born in 1532 and is known to have lived as a young boy at Rossall near to the site of the school. His determination not to abandon his Catholic faith during the reign of Elizabeth I caused William to flee to the continent where he founded the English Seminary at Douai and the Venerable English College in Rome in order that young Englishmen could be trained as priests and return to England to keep alive the Catholic faith.

We are an "outstanding Catholic school" (Section 48 Report 2017), founded on the teachings of Christ and we promote a distinctive Christian ethos where every pupil is considered as unique and important. In particular, we endeavour to help develop young people who show respect for themselves and each other; tolerance, courtesy and a high regard for those less fortunate than themselves. As a result, our students are bright, cheerful, highly motivated and show outstanding attitudes to learning. Our 810 pupils form a friendly, open school in which discipline is good and where a high value is placed on order, respect for others and endeavour. Pupils and staff recognise the importance of the School's Catholic and Christian mission and are committed to it in every way regardless of their faith heritage. The school is widely acknowledged as providing outstanding levels of pastoral care which are based on a secure knowledge of the unique talents of individual students. We rely on and receive excellent levels of support from our parents in our drive to help our pupils develop into rounded, caring and active citizens, fully prepared to meet the challenges of the modern world.

We received nearly 400 applications for September 2023 and 166 pupils joined us in Year 7 for the new school year. We take pupils from over twenty primary schools with the majority coming from our eight Catholic partner primary schools: St. Mary's Fleetwood, St Wulstan's and St Edmund's Fleetwood, Sacred Heart Thornton, St Teresa's Cleveleys, St John's Poulton and St Bernadette's Bispham. Some children travel from the parishes of St Mary's, Great Eccleston and St William's, Pilling. A significant number of children in each year group attended local County Primary Schools. We work hard to ensure that all of our new pupils enjoy a smooth transition from primary school to high school and links between Cardinal Allen and our partner primary schools have always been very strong.

The school is well maintained and a planned refurbishment programme ensures that the pupils and staff enjoy good facilities which are well cared for. Building development in recent years has included a new Music Studio Complex, a refit of IT facilities and a complete refurbishment of our Science department.

Awards, including the BECTA ICT Mark, the Design Mark and the Secondary Geography Quality Mark acknowledge the quality of our curriculum, teaching & learning. We are a Fairtrade Fair Achiever School, one of only twelve Eco Ambassador Schools in the country and a Full International School with an annual exchange visit with our partner school in India. Our school is constantly striving to achieve higher standards as demonstrated by not only excellent GCSE outcomes but also as reported in our most recent Ofsted (2015) and Section 48 Denominational (2017) reports.

I hope that our website and prospectus provide you with the information that you are looking for and give you a sense of what we are about. If you should have any questions about the school or would like to visit us on a working day, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Andrew Cafferkey

Headteacher