St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School, Haslingden

About St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School, Haslingden

St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School in Haslingden is a small, full-to-capacity school with 140 pupils on roll and exactly 140 places available. The school serves a community where 18.6% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, a figure that sits above the national average for primary schools and suggests a genuine mix of backgrounds within the intake. Demand is strikingly high: for the 2025/26 reception intake, the school received 86 applications for just 20 places, giving an oversubscription ratio of 4.3 to one. Even among first-preference families, there were 27 applications for those 20 spots, meaning a significant number of local parents who put St Mary's as their top choice were unable to secure a place. This level of competition is unusual for a school of this size and points to a strong local reputation that extends well beyond its immediate Catholic catchment.

Academically, St Mary's delivers results that comfortably exceed the Lancashire local authority average. In the 2023/24 Key Stage 2 assessments, 70% of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined, compared with a LA average of 60%. The school's reading and maths average scaled scores of 111 and 110 respectively are both strong, and the proportion of pupils achieving the higher standard in reading (60%) and maths (55%) is notably high. In the Rossendale local authority ranking, St Mary's sits 11th out of 31 primary schools, placing it in the top 35% nationally. The school's most recent Ofsted inspection in July 2024 awarded it Outstanding across every category — quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision — maintaining the same top grade it received in its previous inspection in 2013.

The school offers a solid range of facilities for a primary of its size, including a sports hall, gymnasium, playing fields, an ICT suite, art studios, a chapel and a Forest School area. Sports provision covers athletics, swimming, gymnastics and rounders, while extracurricular clubs include gardening, drama and an eco club. St Mary's also publishes a broad list of SEND provisions, covering specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, moderate learning difficulties, social and emotional mental health needs, speech and language communication needs, visual impairment and autistic spectrum disorder. For Catholic families in the Rossendale area, this school will be an obvious first choice, but given the intense oversubscription — 4.3 applicants per place — securing a spot is far from guaranteed. Parents considering St Mary's should be prepared for a competitive admissions process and may want to explore the nearest other Outstanding-rated primary, Edenfield Church of England Primary School, which sits 3.2 km away.

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