Kensington Primary Academy

About Kensington Primary Academy

Kensington Primary Academy is a state primary in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and it is a school that families clearly want to get into. With 232 pupils on roll against a capacity of 240, it is essentially full, and the demand is intense: for the 2025/26 reception intake, the school received 123 applications for just 30 places, giving an oversubscription ratio of 4.1. Only 25 of those offers went to first-preference families, despite 33 first-preference applications being made. The school serves a notably diverse intake in terms of disadvantage: 37.1% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, which is significantly above the national primary average of around 23% and suggests a genuinely mixed catchment. The school is led by headteacher Helen Barnes and has a nursery provision for children from age three, feeding into the main school. It has no religious character, so admissions are purely based on the local authority’s criteria, and the high application numbers reflect its reputation across the borough.

Academically, Kensington Primary Academy performs solidly but not at the very top of its competitive local authority. In the 2023/24 Key Stage 2 assessments, 63% of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined, which is below the Kensington and Chelsea local authority average of 72%. The school ranks 19th out of 25 primary schools in the borough on this metric, placing it in the bottom quarter locally, though nationally it sits around the 48th percentile. Individual subject scores are stronger: 96% of pupils met the expected standard in maths, with an average scaled score of 107, and 74% did so in both reading and writing. Higher-standard attainment is more modest — 7% achieved the higher standard across all three subjects — but in maths 19% reached the higher threshold, and 22% did so in writing. The school’s most recent Ofsted inspection, an ungraded visit in November 2024, confirmed that standards are being maintained at Outstanding, a grade it has held since its last full graded inspection in 2018.

The school offers a broad set of facilities for a primary of its size, including a library, sensory room, sports hall, art studios, ICT suite and playing fields, plus an outdoor playground. Sports provision covers tennis, football, athletics, cricket and cross country, and there is a decent range of clubs including gardening, chess, science club and choir. For children with special educational needs, the school lists support for social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, and autistic spectrum disorder — though the Parent View survey, based on 24 responses, recorded no answers at all to the question about SEND support, so it is hard to gauge parental satisfaction in that area. Overall, 71% of parents would recommend the school, and strong majorities agreed that children are happy (84% strongly agree or agree) and feel safe (92%). This is a school that suits families who value a genuinely diverse, well-resourced community primary with an Outstanding rating, but who are realistic about its academic ranking within a very high-performing borough.

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