St Leonard's Catholic Primary School, Silksworth

About St Leonard's Catholic Primary School, Silksworth

St Leonard’s Catholic Primary School in Silksworth holds a Good rating from Ofsted, with its most recent graded inspection in 2022 awarding Good across every category: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision. The previous inspection in 2015 also rated the school Good overall. But the standout metric is the Key Stage 2 combined result: every single pupil — 100 per cent — met the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. That places the school first out of 73 primaries in Sunderland, first out of 677 in the North East region, and 30th nationally out of 13,686 schools. The local authority average for the same combined measure is 67 per cent, so the school is performing well above the typical Sunderland primary.

Breaking down the results, the school’s average scaled scores are 111 in reading and 110 in maths, both comfortably above the national benchmark of 100. More than half of pupils achieved the higher standard in reading and maths — 55 per cent in each — and 36 per cent did so in writing. The proportion reaching the higher standard in all three subjects combined was 27 per cent. While the data does not include progress scores, the consistency across subjects is notable. The school’s ranking score of 100, based on the proportion of pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, puts it in the top five per cent nationally. Its closest rival in Sunderland, Benedict Biscop Church of England Academy, scored 90, and the nearest Outstanding-rated school is 2.1 kilometres away.

The school is oversubscribed: for 2025/26, it received 49 applications for 31 places, with 30 of those coming as first preferences, giving an oversubscription ratio of 1.58. Facilities include a sensory room, music rooms, an ICT suite, a sports hall, art studios and a chapel. Sports on offer range from football and cricket to swimming and tennis, and there are clubs for drama, choir and chess. The school’s SEND provisions cover specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech and language communication needs, physical disability and autistic spectrum disorder. With 20.6 per cent of pupils eligible for free school meals, St Leonard’s serves a mixed catchment but delivers outcomes that would suit any family prioritising strong academic foundations in a Catholic primary setting.

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