Cartmel Priory CofE School

About Cartmel Priory CofE School

Cartmel Priory CofE School is a secondary school in Westmorland and Furness that operates with a noticeably tight fit between its pupil numbers and capacity. With 354 pupils on roll against a capacity of 380, the school is running close to full, and the demand is clear: for the 2025/26 intake, the school received 108 applications for 75 places, with 82 of those coming as first preferences. That oversubscription ratio of 1.44 suggests a school that local families are actively choosing. The pupil body is less economically disadvantaged than the national average — 14.5% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, compared with a typical state secondary figure of around 23% — which may reflect the rural and relatively affluent catchment in the South Lakes area. As a Church of England school, it has a religious character, though the data doesn't specify any particular admissions criteria tied to faith.

Academically, Cartmel Priory sits in a middling position locally and nationally. Its Progress 8 score of -0.08 is slightly below the national average of zero, but it actually beats the Westmorland and Furness local authority average of -0.12, placing it 10th out of 19 schools in the area. That puts it in the bottom half of the LA, but only just — it's within the 'Average' progress banding nationally. The Attainment 8 score of 46.4 means the average pupil achieves roughly a strong pass in five subjects and a standard pass in three more. On the basics measure, 66.2% of pupils achieved a grade 4 or above in both English and maths, though that drops to 45.1% for the stronger grade 5 threshold. The EBacc entry rate is low at 18.3%, and only 15.5% of pupils entered the full EBacc, which is well below the government's ambition. The school's most recent graded Ofsted inspection in 2013 rated it Outstanding overall, but the most recent ungraded inspection in 2022 confirmed it now holds a Good rating, with leadership and management also rated Good.

The school offers a solid range of facilities for a smaller secondary, including an ICT suite, art studios, tennis courts, an astro turf pitch, a swimming pool and a chapel. Sports provision is broad, with rugby, rowing, hockey, netball and gymnastics among the options, and there's a decent selection of clubs covering debate, coding, choir, chess and Young Enterprise. SEND support is well-documented, with provisions for pupils with dyslexia, moderate learning difficulties, social and emotional needs, speech and language challenges, visual impairment and autistic spectrum disorder. There is no sixth form, so pupils will need to move on after Year 11. This is a school that suits families looking for a Church of England secondary in a rural setting, where the school is popular enough to be oversubscribed but not so competitive that a first-preference application is unlikely to succeed — 75 of the 82 first-preference applicants received an offer.

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