Houghton Primary School

About Houghton Primary School

Houghton Primary School sits within the Cambridgeshire local authority, a large county with 210 primary schools, and ranks 37th among them. In the more immediate Huntingdonshire area, where it is placed 8th out of 55 schools, it sits behind top-performing peers such as Histon and Impington Brook Primary School, Caldecote Primary School, and Abbots Ripton CofE Primary School. The school is a state-funded, mixed-gender primary for children aged 4 to 11, with a current roll of 181 pupils against a capacity of 210. It has no religious character and is led by headteacher Andrew Spencer. In its most recent ungraded Ofsted inspection in 2023, the school was confirmed to have maintained its Good rating, a standard it has held consistently since at least its previous graded inspection in 2014, when leadership and management, early years provision, and overall effectiveness were all judged Good.

Academically, Houghton Primary performs solidly 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 Cambridgeshire LA average of 58%. This places the school in the top 15% of Huntingdonshire primaries on this metric and in the top 30% nationally. Subject-level results are strong: 83% met expectations in maths, 78% in writing, and 74% in reading. Higher-standard attainment is more modest, with 9% achieving the higher benchmark across all three subjects, though 30% reached the higher standard in maths and 39% in reading. Progress scores are not available in the data, so it is not possible to assess how much value the school adds relative to pupils’ starting points, but the raw outcomes are comfortably above the typical county primary.

The school offers a broad range of facilities including a sports hall, music rooms, art studios, a sensory room, and a chapel, alongside playing fields and an outdoor playground. Sports provision covers gymnastics, athletics, rounders, and swimming, while clubs include gardening, art, chess, book club, choir, and film club. SEND support is well-documented, with provisions for specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, speech, language and communication needs, hearing impairment, autistic spectrum disorder, and social, emotional and mental health needs. For the 2025/26 intake, the school was oversubscribed: 45 applications for 28 places, with 26 first-preference offers made. This suggests a popular local option, particularly suited to families seeking a non-faith, community-focused primary with above-average outcomes and a wide extracurricular offer.

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