Petham Primary School

About Petham Primary School

Petham Primary School is a small state primary in the Kent local authority, serving 103 pupils aged 4 to 11 in the Canterbury borough. Within Kent’s 459 primary schools, it ranks 356th, placing it in the bottom half of the county. The top-performing peers in the same local authority include Stelling Minnis Church of England Primary School, Leigh Academy Dartford, and Temple Ewell Church of England Primary School, all of which score significantly higher on the same ranking metric. The school is led by headteacher Scott Guy and has no religious character. Its most recent Ofsted inspection, an ungraded visit in 2025, confirmed that standards are maintained, and the school retains its Good rating from the previous graded inspection in 2015. That earlier inspection rated both overall effectiveness and leadership and management as Good, with early years provision also judged Good. This represents a notable improvement from the school’s 2013 inspection, which rated it Inadequate across the board.

Academically, Petham’s Key Stage 2 results for the 2023/24 year show a mixed picture. The proportion of pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing, and maths combined was 50%, below the Kent local authority average of 63%. In individual subjects, 83% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, 92% in writing, and 58% in maths. Higher-attaining pupils were less common: 17% achieved a higher standard in reading, 8% in writing, and 8% in maths. Average scores were 105 in reading and 99 in maths. The school’s ranking on the KS2 reading, writing, and maths expected standard metric places it in the bottom 50 nationally, at the 79th percentile. Parent View responses from 47 parents between September 2024 and September 2025 show strong satisfaction: 98% agreed or strongly agreed that their child is happy, and 98% that their child feels safe. However, only 72% agreed that the school has high expectations for their child, and 83% would recommend the school to other parents.

The school offers a range of facilities including a Forest School, ICT suite, sports hall, playing fields, music rooms, library, and a chapel. Sports provision includes cricket, netball, rounders, tennis, cross country, and football, while clubs cover chess, coding, eco club, film club, gardening, and choir. SEND support is available for pupils with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, moderate learning difficulties, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, and autistic spectrum disorder. For the 2025/26 intake, the school was oversubscribed: 32 applications were received for 10 places, with 9 first-preference offers made, giving an oversubscription ratio of 3.2. This suggests strong local demand despite the school’s middling academic ranking. Petham is best suited to families who value a small, community-focused primary with good pastoral care and a broad range of extracurricular activities, and who are comfortable with results that sit below the county average.

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