St Mary's Catholic Primary School (Maltby)

About St Mary's Catholic Primary School (Maltby)

St Mary's Catholic Primary School in Maltby sits well below the local authority average for Key Stage 2 outcomes, a gap that parents will want to weigh carefully. In the 2023/24 academic year, just 18% of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined, compared with a Rotherham primary average of 60%. That places the school 83rd out of 84 similar schools in the borough, putting it in the bottom tier nationally. The individual subject scores tell a similar story: 36% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, 32% in writing and 41% in maths. Only 5% achieved the higher standard in maths, and no pupils reached the higher bar in reading or writing. These are sobering figures, but they need to be read alongside the school's context — a third of pupils are eligible for free school meals, well above the national average, and the school is small, with just 146 children on roll.

The school's most recent Ofsted inspection, in July 2022, awarded an overall rating of Good, a significant improvement from the previous inspection in February 2020, which had judged the school Inadequate. Every graded area — quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision — was rated Good. The turnaround in leadership under headteacher Victoria Sonko appears to have been substantial. However, the academic results from the same period suggest that translating that improved leadership into strong exam outcomes remains a work in progress. The school's Progress 8 scores for reading, writing and maths are not available in the data, so it is difficult to say how much of the low attainment is due to pupils' starting points versus the school's impact. Parents looking at these results will want to ask the school directly about how it supports catch-up and progress.

St Mary's is a Roman Catholic primary with a nursery provision, taking children from age 3 to 11. It was oversubscribed for the 2025/26 intake, with 12 first-preference applications for 12 places and a total of 15 applications overall, suggesting strong local demand despite the academic picture. The school offers a chapel on site, a library, an ICT suite, playing fields and an outdoor playground. Sports include swimming, tennis, rounders, netball, cricket and cross country, and there is a good range of clubs from book club and coding to gardening, chess, film club and science club. For children with additional needs, the school lists support for social, emotional and mental health, speech, language and communication, and autistic spectrum disorder. This is a small, faith-based community school that has clearly stabilised under its current leadership, but families prioritising academic outcomes at primary level will want to explore how the school plans to close the gap with the local average.

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