Shawley Community Primary Academy & Nursery

About Shawley Community Primary Academy & Nursery

Shawley Community Primary Academy & Nursery has turned a corner. In its most recent Ofsted inspection, carried out in July 2024, the school was rated Good overall, a significant improvement from its previous Requires Improvement rating in 2019. Every graded area — quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision — was judged Good. That consistency across the board is a strong signal of stable, effective leadership under headteacher Kate Ashworth. But the real story is in the numbers. At Key Stage 2, 72% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined, comfortably above the Surrey local authority average of 66%. That places Shawley 5th out of 21 primary schools in Reigate and Banstead, and in the top 25% nationally. For a school where 27.7% of pupils are eligible for free school meals — well above the national average — these results are particularly striking.

Digging into the detail, Shawley’s strengths are clearest in reading. 85% of pupils reached the expected standard, and 41% achieved the higher standard. Maths is similarly strong, with an average scaled score of 107 and 79% hitting the expected level. Writing lags a little, with 77% at expected and 26% at the higher mark, but still above the LA average. Progress scores aren’t published in the data, so we can’t say how much value the school adds, but the raw outcomes speak for themselves. The school ranks 58th out of 298 primary schools in Surrey overall, which is a solid mid-table position in a competitive county. For context, the top three schools in the local authority — South Farnham, The Raleigh, and Cardinal Newman — all score in the 90s on the ranking metric, so Shawley is punching well above its weight given its intake. The nearest Outstanding-rated school is Wallace Fields Infant School and Nursery, 2.8 km away.

Shawley is a mixed, non-religious state primary for children aged 0 to 11, with a nursery on site. It’s popular: for 2025/26 entry, there were 63 applications for 29 places, making it oversubscribed by a factor of 2.17, with only 14 first-preference offers. That suggests families in the area rate it highly. Facilities include a sports hall, music rooms, art studios, a forest school and a chapel. Sports on offer are cricket, football, rounders, tennis and athletics, and there are clubs for choir, drama and art. The school has a broad SEND offer, with provisions for dyslexia, moderate learning difficulties, social and emotional mental health needs, speech and language issues, physical disability and autistic spectrum disorder. This is a school that delivers strong academic results for a diverse intake, and its improvement journey from Requires Improvement to Good in five years is a concrete achievement worth noting.

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