St Michael With St John CofE Primary School

About St Michael With St John CofE Primary School

St Michael With St John CofE Primary School sits comfortably above the local authority average for its key stage 2 headline measure, with 67% of pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined against a Blackburn with Darwen average of 59%. That eight-percentage-point gap puts the school in the top half of the 56 primaries in the borough, ranked 23rd overall. The school’s overall Ofsted rating of Good, confirmed in an ungraded inspection in October 2022, represents a clear improvement from its previous graded inspection in 2011, when it was judged to require improvement. Leadership and management, as well as the overall effectiveness, are now rated Good. The school has held this Good rating across both its recent inspections, suggesting a sustained upward trajectory. With 282 pupils on roll against a capacity of 315, the school is not yet full, but it is oversubscribed: for the 2025/26 intake, 52 families applied for 17 places, and 16 of those were first-preference offers.

Digging into the 2023/24 key stage 2 results, the school’s strongest subject performance was in maths, where 81% of pupils reached the expected standard and the average scaled score was 105. Reading and writing both saw 79% of pupils at the expected level, with average reading scores at 104. The proportion of pupils achieving the higher standard in all three subjects was 5%, though individual subject higher-standard figures were more varied: 21% in reading, 19% in maths and 9% in writing. Progress scores are not available in the data, so it is not possible to say how much value the school adds relative to pupils’ starting points. Nationally, the school ranks in the 38th percentile among all primaries for the combined expected standard, and in the 37th percentile within the North West region. For context, the local authority has four primaries rated Outstanding, the nearest being Wensley Fold CofE Primary Academy, 1.9 km away.

The school offers a range of facilities including an outdoor playground, music rooms, a sensory room, a forest school and a chapel. Sports provision covers swimming, rounders, cricket, tennis, football and netball, while extracurricular clubs include drama, choir and art club. SEND support is broad, covering specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, hearing impairment, physical disability and autistic spectrum disorder. The school is a Church of England primary, which may appeal to families seeking a faith-based setting, though the data does not specify any faith-based admissions criteria. With 24.1% of pupils eligible for free school meals, the school serves a mixed catchment. Given its oversubscription ratio of 3.06, families should be prepared to apply early and list it as a first preference to maximise their chance of a place. This is a solid, improving primary that delivers above-average outcomes without being among the very highest-performing in the borough.

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