Coalway Community Infant School

About Coalway Community Infant School

Coalway Community Infant School serves just 96 pupils aged 5 to 7 in the Forest of Dean, and its most recent Ofsted inspection in 2024 rated it Requires Improvement overall — a rating that puts it below the Gloucestershire local authority average, where only 9 out of 243 primary schools hold an Outstanding grade. The school’s headline metrics are notably weaker than the LA average for Key Stage 2 outcomes, which sits at 59, though it is worth noting that Coalway is an infant school and therefore does not produce KS2 SATs results itself. Compared with its previous inspection in 2021, where it also received Requires Improvement, the school has seen a slight decline: behaviour and attitudes dropped from Good to Requires Improvement, while personal development held steady at Good. Leadership and management, quality of education, and early years provision all remain at Requires Improvement, meaning the school has not yet turned a corner on the issues flagged three years ago.

Because Coalway is an infant school, it does not publish Progress 8 or KS2 SATs data — the typical metrics for primary comparison. Instead, the most concrete academic signal comes from the Ofsted breakdown. The early years provision is rated Requires Improvement, which is significant for a school that takes children from age 5. On the positive side, personal development is rated Good, suggesting that staff are supporting pupils’ character and wellbeing reasonably well. The school’s 16.7% of pupils eligible for free school meals is slightly above the national average, and with only 96 pupils against a capacity of 180, the school is significantly under-enrolled. This under-subscription may reflect parental caution following the sustained Requires Improvement rating, though the most recent admissions data for 2025/26 tells a different story: the school was oversubscribed, with 51 applications for 28 places and all 28 first-preference applicants offered a spot.

Coalway offers a decent range of facilities for a small infant school, including a gymnasium, music rooms, an ICT suite, a forest school, and art studios — the forest school is a particular draw for outdoor learning. Sports provision covers football, gymnastics, dance, netball, cross country, cricket, and tennis, and clubs include chess, coding, choir, drama, eco club, and film club. The school’s SEND provisions cover moderate learning difficulty, social emotional and mental health needs, speech language and communication needs, and other difficulty/disability, which is a broad but manageable range for a small setting. This school will suit families in the Forest of Dean who prioritise a small, community-focused infant school with strong extracurricular offerings, but who are comfortable with a Requires Improvement rating and want to see evidence of improvement before their child moves on to junior school.

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