St Bernard's RC Primary School, Bolton

About St Bernard's RC Primary School, Bolton

St Bernard’s RC Primary School in Bolton is a state-funded Roman Catholic primary for mixed pupils aged 4 to 11, led by headteacher Kirstin Taylor. It sits within the Bolton local authority, where it ranks 45th out of 87 same-type schools — placing it just above the midpoint of its peers. The top three schools in the area, according to local rankings, are The Olive School, Bolton, The Oaks Primary School, and Beaumont Primary School, all of which score higher on the same metric. Beaumont Primary is also the nearest Outstanding-rated school, located just 0.1 kilometres away. St Bernard’s itself holds a Good rating from Ofsted, a significant improvement from its previous Requires Improvement judgement. Its most recent graded inspection rated both leadership and management and overall effectiveness as Good, and an ungraded inspection confirmed the school remains Good. With 192 pupils on roll against a capacity of 210, the school is slightly below full but still oversubscribed for 2025/26 admissions.

Academically, St Bernard’s performs broadly in line with local averages. In Key Stage 2 results, 64% of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing, and maths combined — just below the Bolton local authority average of 66%. The school’s ranking score of 64 places it in the top 50% nationally. Subject-level scores show stronger outcomes in writing, where 88% met the expected standard, compared with 79% in maths and 76% in reading. At the higher standard, 18% of pupils achieved the higher benchmark across all three subjects, with reading leading at 39%, followed by writing at 27% and maths at 24%. Average scaled scores were 107 in reading and 106 in maths. Progress measures are not available for any subject, so it is not possible to assess how much value the school adds relative to pupils’ starting points.

The school offers a solid range of facilities including a library, ICT suite, music rooms, gymnasium, playing fields, a chapel, and a Forest School area. Sports provision covers athletics, tennis, rounders, and gymnastics, while extracurricular clubs include coding, chess, book club, science club, film club, and gardening. For pupils with additional needs, the school lists SEND provisions for specific learning difficulties, moderate learning difficulty, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, multi-sensory impairment, and autistic spectrum disorder. Admissions data for 2025/26 shows the school is oversubscribed: 53 applications for 29 places, with 22 first-preference offers made from 22 first-preference applications, giving an oversubscription ratio of 1.83. This suggests strong local demand, particularly from Catholic families seeking a faith-based primary with a broad curriculum and good pastoral support.

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