Cherry Hinton Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School

About Cherry Hinton Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School

Cherry Hinton Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School sits in a tricky spot when you compare its headline metrics against the Cambridgeshire average for primary schools. The local authority average for pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths at Key Stage 2 is 58 per cent, but Cherry Hinton’s figure is 48 per cent — a gap of ten percentage points. That places the school 151st out of 210 primaries in the county, putting it in the bottom half of Cambridgeshire schools. Nationally, it sits around the 80th percentile, meaning roughly one in five schools nationally performs lower on this measure. The picture is more mixed when you look at individual subjects: 88 per cent of pupils hit the expected standard in reading, well above the national average, but writing and maths lag behind at 60 per cent and 56 per cent respectively. The school is also oversubscribed, with 45 applications for 22 places in the 2025/26 admissions round, suggesting local demand remains strong despite the middling headline results.

The school’s most recent Ofsted inspection, in June 2023, rated it Good across all five categories — quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision. That’s a consistent improvement from its previous inspection in 2018, where early years provision was graded Requires Improvement. At Key Stage 2, the average scaled scores tell a nuanced story: reading sits at 107, comfortably above the national benchmark of 100, while maths is at 102. The proportion of pupils achieving the higher standard in reading is 28 per cent, but no pupils reached that level in writing or the combined reading, writing and maths measure. Progress scores are not available in the data, so it’s hard to say how much value the school adds relative to pupils’ starting points. The school’s ranking within Cambridge local authority — 24th out of 26 schools — reflects its relatively low combined expected standard score of 48, though this is a narrow measure that doesn’t capture the full picture of a small school with just 183 pupils.

Cherry Hinton is a Church of England voluntary controlled primary with a nursery provision for three-year-olds, and it serves a community where 21.9 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals — above the national average. The school offers a decent range of facilities including a forest school, chapel, music rooms, art studios and a library, plus sports like tennis, netball, swimming and cricket. Clubs include drama, chess, coding and eco club. The school has identified SEND provisions for moderate learning difficulty, speech and language needs, hearing impairment and autistic spectrum disorder. With 183 pupils against a capacity of 180, the school is effectively full, and oversubscription is high — 2.05 applications per place, with 20 of the 22 places going to first-preference applicants. This is a school that suits families who value a church foundation, a strong early years setting, and a community feel, but who are realistic about its academic outcomes compared with higher-performing peers in Cambridgeshire.

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