Barrow Hedges Primary School

About Barrow Hedges Primary School

Barrow Hedges Primary School in Sutton has been judged Outstanding across the board in its most recent Ofsted inspection, a significant upgrade from its previous Good rating. The school received top marks of 1 for every category inspected in 2023, including quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision. This places it among just 12 primary schools in the local authority to hold an Outstanding rating. On the most telling academic metric for a primary school, 81% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined at Key Stage 2 in the 2023/24 academic year. That is comfortably above the Sutton local authority average of 69% and places the school 10th out of 33 primaries in the borough. Nationally, it ranks in the top 10% of all primary schools on this measure.

Looking deeper at the Key Stage 2 results, the school’s performance is consistently strong across individual subjects. In maths, 91% of pupils reached the expected standard and 59% achieved the higher standard, with an average scaled score of 111. Reading saw 91% at expected and 48% at the higher level, with an average score of 110. Writing was slightly lower but still robust, with 83% meeting expectations and 34% reaching the higher standard. A quarter of pupils (26%) achieved the higher standard across all three subjects combined. The school does not publish progress scores, so it is not possible to say how much value it adds relative to pupils’ starting points, but the raw attainment figures are well above national averages. For context, the school’s overall ranking score of 81 puts it just behind top local peers like Cheam Fields Primary Academy and Westbourne Primary School.

Barrow Hedges is a large primary school with 689 pupils on roll, slightly above its official capacity of 685, and it is heavily oversubscribed. For 2025/26 entry, there were 379 applications for 90 places, with 109 first-preference applications and 85 offers made to first-preference families. That works out at 4.21 applicants per place. The school has a nursery provision for children from age 3. Facilities include a sports hall, playing fields, a library, an ICT suite, art studios, a gymnasium, a dining hall, and a forest school. There is a wide range of clubs from science and film to chess and gardening, and sports on offer include athletics, cricket, rounders, cross country and dance. The school provides for a broad spectrum of special educational needs, including dyslexia, speech and language difficulties, hearing impairment, physical disability, and autistic spectrum disorder. It is a non-denominational, mixed state school with no sixth form.

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