St Mary's Church of England Primary School & Nursery, Purton

About St Mary's Church of England Primary School & Nursery, Purton

St Mary's Church of England Primary School & Nursery, Purton, sits within the Wiltshire local authority, a county with a large number of primary schools. Among the 201 primary schools in the area, the school ranks 106th, placing it in the middle of the pack. For context, the top-performing peers in the local authority include Stanton St Quintin Primary and Nursery School, The Holy Trinity Church of England Primary Academy, and Sutton Veny CofE School, all of which achieve higher ranking scores. St Mary's is a state-funded, mixed-gender primary with a Church of England religious character, serving children from age 2 to 11. It has a nursery on site and a current roll of 343 pupils against a capacity of 420, meaning there is some room for growth. The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals stands at 12.8 per cent, which is close to the national average for primary schools. The school is led by headteacher Naomi Clarke.

Academically, St Mary's most recent Key Stage 2 results, from the 2023/24 academic year, show that 50 per cent of pupils met the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined. This is below the Wiltshire local authority average of 58 per cent. The school's ranking on this metric places it in the bottom 50 per cent nationally, at the 79th percentile. Looking at individual subjects, 77 per cent of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, 73 per cent in writing, and 67 per cent in maths. At the higher standard, 7 per cent achieved the top level across all three subjects, with 32 per cent reaching that level in reading, 10 per cent in writing, and 18 per cent in maths. Average scaled scores were 105 for reading and 103 for maths. The school's most recent Ofsted inspection, an ungraded visit in 2023, confirmed it remains Good, a rating it has held since its previous graded inspection in 2013, where leadership and management were also judged Good.

The school offers a range of facilities including a sports hall, gymnasium, ICT suite, art studios, playing fields, an outdoor playground, and a chapel. Sports on offer include athletics, tennis, dance, and football, while clubs extend to eco club, coding, chess, film club, science club, and choir. For pupils with additional needs, the school lists provisions for specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, autistic spectrum disorder, and other difficulties. For the 2025/26 intake, the school was oversubscribed, with 42 applications for 29 places and 28 first-preference offers made, giving an oversubscription ratio of 1.45. This suggests strong local demand, particularly from families who value a Church of England primary with nursery provision and a broad set of extracurricular activities, though the academic outcomes are more mixed compared with the top-performing peers in the area.

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