St John Rigby Catholic Primary School

About St John Rigby Catholic Primary School

St John Rigby Catholic Primary School sits within the Bedford local authority, a Roman Catholic state primary for mixed pupils aged 5 to 11. In the most recent local rankings of 46 primary schools, it placed 40th, placing it in the bottom half of the authority. The top-performing peers in Bedford include Thurleigh Primary School, Sharnbrook Primary, and Harrold Primary Academy, all of which scored notably higher on the same ranking metric. The school is also less than a kilometre from Castle Newnham School, one of only three primary schools in the authority rated Outstanding by Ofsted. St John Rigby itself holds a Good rating, a significant improvement from its previous Requires Improvement judgement in 2019. The school has 306 pupils on roll against a capacity of 420, and 11.8 per cent of children are eligible for free school meals, slightly below the national average for primary schools.

Academically, the school’s Key Stage 2 results for the 2023/24 academic year show a mixed picture. The proportion of pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing, and maths combined was 43 per cent, well below the Bedford local authority average of 57 per cent. In individual subjects, 70 per cent met the expected standard in reading, 64 per cent in writing, and 61 per cent in maths. The proportion achieving the higher standard across all three subjects was just 4 per cent. Average scaled scores were 103 in reading and 101 in maths. The school’s Ofsted inspection in September 2023 rated all five key areas — quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision — as Good, a clear step up from the previous inspection where most areas were graded as Requires Improvement. Progress scores are not available for the current data, so it is not possible to compare pupil progress against national benchmarks.

The school offers a range of facilities including a gymnasium, library, playing fields, dining hall, art studios, and a chapel. Sports provision includes dance, swimming, cricket, cross country, and athletics, while extracurricular clubs cover gardening, book club, science club, art club, coding, and film club. The school has a broad SEND offer, supporting pupils with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, moderate learning difficulties, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, hearing impairment, physical disability, and autistic spectrum disorder. For the 2025/26 intake, the school was oversubscribed: 40 applications were received for 18 places, with 14 offers going to first-preference applicants out of 15 first-preference requests. This suggests strong local demand, particularly from Catholic families. The school does not have a nursery or sixth form, and is not a boarding school. It will suit families seeking a faith-based primary with a supportive SEND framework and a clear improvement trajectory under its current leadership.

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