Salterforth Primary School

About Salterforth Primary School

Salterforth Primary School holds a Good rating from Ofsted, a grade it has maintained across its two most recent inspections, the latest of which took place in 2023. The inspectors awarded Good across every category, including quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and early years provision. On the most informative exam metric available, the school’s Key Stage 2 results for the 2023/24 academic year show that 50% of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined. That figure sits below the Lancashire local authority average of 60%, placing the school 319th out of 480 similar schools in the area. However, the picture is more nuanced when you look at individual subjects. In reading, 88% of pupils met the expected standard and 31% achieved a higher score, while in writing 75% met expectations. Maths was the weaker area, with 63% at the expected level and 19% reaching the higher threshold.

The school’s average scaled scores tell a similar story: reading came in at 107, comfortably above the national benchmark of 100, while maths averaged 102. No progress scores are available for any of the three subjects, so it is not possible to say how much value the school adds relative to pupils’ starting points. Nationally, Salterforth ranks in the bottom 50% of primary schools on the combined expected standard metric, sitting at the 80th percentile. Within Pendle, it ranks 27th out of 33 primary schools. The school is small, with 103 pupils on roll against a capacity of 105, and 16.5% of children are eligible for free school meals. The headteacher is Vikki Havers-Strong.

Salterforth is a state-funded, mixed primary school for children aged 4 to 11, with no nursery or sixth form provision. It is heavily oversubscribed: for the 2025/26 intake, there were 54 applications for just 15 places, and 18 families put it as their first preference, resulting in an oversubscription ratio of 3.6. The school offers a broad set of facilities including an ICT suite, library, sports hall, playing fields, art studios, and a Forest School area. Sports on offer include football, cricket, swimming and cross country, and clubs include Eco Club, drama and gardening. The school has a dedicated SEND register covering moderate learning difficulty, speech and language needs, autistic spectrum disorder, social and emotional mental health needs, and physical disability. This is a school that suits families who value a strong reading focus and a wide range of outdoor and creative activities, but who are aware that its combined academic results are below the local average.

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