Garden Fields Junior Mixed and Infant School

About Garden Fields Junior Mixed and Infant School

Parents considering Garden Fields Junior Mixed and Infant School will find strong signals of satisfaction from those already there. In the most recent Parent View survey, covering September 2024 to September 2025, 83% of the 175 respondents said they would recommend the school to other parents. That’s a solid vote of confidence. The school is also clearly popular in the local area: for entry in 2025/26, it received 99 applications for just 30 places, an oversubscription ratio of 3.3 to one. Of those, 31 families put it as their first preference, and 29 of those were offered a place. So it’s a school where demand significantly outstrips supply, and parents who get a place tend to feel positive about the experience. The survey responses back that up, with 95% of parents agreeing or strongly agreeing that their child is happy at the school, and 92% saying their child feels safe.

Academically, Garden Fields delivers results that sit comfortably above the local average. In the 2023/24 Key Stage 2 assessments, 70% of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined, compared with a Hertfordshire local authority average of 64%. That places the school 124th out of 401 primary schools in the county. In individual subjects, 86% met the expected standard in writing, 82% in maths and 80% in reading. At the higher standard, 41% of pupils achieved that level in reading, 33% in maths and 19% in writing. The average scaled scores were 107 in reading and 106 in maths. The school’s most recent Ofsted inspection, an ungraded visit in December 2024, confirmed that standards are being maintained, and its overall effectiveness remains Good, a notable improvement from the Requires Improvement rating it received in its previous graded inspection back in 2013.

The school is a state primary for mixed genders aged 5 to 11, with 480 pupils on roll against a capacity of 570, so there is some headroom but not much given the oversubscription. Facilities include a sports hall, forest school, dining hall, outdoor playground and a chapel. Sports on offer include football, cross country, cricket, tennis and swimming, while clubs range from drama and choir to coding and film club. The school has a broad range of SEND provisions, covering specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, moderate learning difficulties, speech and language needs, visual impairment and autistic spectrum disorder. 25% of parents who responded to the survey said their child has SEND, though views on support were more mixed than other areas. For families who value a strong sense of community and solid academic outcomes without the pressure of a selective school, Garden Fields is clearly a popular choice in St Albans.

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