Beacon Primary School

About Beacon Primary School

Beacon Primary School is a state-funded mixed primary in Bolton, serving children from age 2 to 11. In the local authority's primary school rankings, it sits at 71st out of 87 schools, placing it in the bottom half of Bolton's primaries. The top-performing peers in the area include The Olive School, Bolton, The Oaks Primary School, and The Valley Community Primary School, all of which score significantly higher on the same ranking metric. Beacon's most recent Ofsted inspection, carried out in March 2023, rated the school Good overall, with Good marks across all five categories including quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision. This represents a notable improvement from its previous inspection in 2017, when the school was rated Inadequate overall, with leadership and management also marked Inadequate and early years provision requiring improvement. The school is led by headteacher Debra Meekings and has a capacity of 220 pupils, which it currently meets exactly.

At Key Stage 2, Beacon's results are mixed when compared with the local authority average. The proportion of pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined is 52%, well below the Bolton average of 66%. In individual subjects, 63% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, the same proportion in writing, and 63% in maths. At the higher standard, just 7% achieved the combined benchmark, with 19% reaching the higher standard in reading, 11% in writing, and 19% in maths. Average scaled scores were 103 in reading and 101 in maths. Progress scores are not available for any of the three core subjects. Nationally, the school ranks in the bottom quartile, at 10,119th out of 13,686 primaries, and within the North West region it sits at 1,465th out of 2,065 schools. The school's ranking score of 52 places it in the bottom 50 tier nationally.

Beacon offers a range of facilities including playing fields, a gymnasium, a dining hall, an ICT suite, art studios and a chapel. Sports provision covers netball, tennis, athletics and swimming, while extracurricular clubs include chess, gardening and eco club. The school has a broad SEND offer, supporting pupils with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, moderate learning difficulties, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, hearing and visual impairments, physical disabilities, and other difficulties. Nursery provision is available for younger children. For the 2025/26 intake, the school was oversubscribed: 34 applications were received for 24 places, with 21 first-preference offers made and 21 first-preference applications received, giving an oversubscription ratio of 1.42. This suggests strong local demand, though families should note that the school's academic outcomes are below the LA average and that the nearest Outstanding-rated primary, Blackrod Primary School, is 2.5 km away.

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