St Michael's Catholic Primary School, Esh Village

About St Michael's Catholic Primary School, Esh Village

St Michael's Catholic Primary School in Esh Village was rated Good overall in its most recent Ofsted inspection in 2022, a step down from the Outstanding grade it had held since its previous inspection in 2007. The inspection report rated every category — quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision — as Good, with no areas marked as Requires Improvement or Inadequate. On the most informative exam metric available, 61% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined at Key Stage 2 in the 2023/24 academic year. That figure sits just one percentage point below the County Durham local authority average of 62%, placing the school 99th out of 208 primary schools in the area. While the school does not rank among the top performers in the region, its results are broadly in line with the typical primary in the local authority.

Looking more closely at the individual subject scores, 79% of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, with an average scaled score of 105, while 82% did so in maths, averaging 104. Writing saw 71% meeting expectations. At the higher standard, 29% achieved greater depth in reading, 14% in maths, and 11% in writing, with just 7% hitting the higher threshold across all three subjects. The school does not publish progress scores for reading, writing or maths, so it is not possible to see how much value it adds relative to pupils' starting points. Nationally, the school sits in the 54th percentile for its combined expected standard score, meaning it performs slightly above the median of all primary schools in England. In the North East region, it ranks 393rd out of 677 schools, placing it in the bottom half of the region's primaries.

The school is a Roman Catholic state primary for mixed-gender pupils aged 3 to 11, with a nursery on site. It is oversubscribed: for the 2025/26 intake, there were 47 applications for 27 places, with 24 of those coming as first preferences. Facilities include a sensory room, library, music rooms, ICT suite, gymnasium and chapel. Sports on offer include athletics, rounders, dance, gymnastics and football, and clubs range from art and coding to chess and book club. The school supports a wide range of SEND needs, including dyslexia, moderate learning difficulties, social and emotional mental health needs, speech and language communication needs, hearing impairment, multi-sensory impairment, autistic spectrum disorder and other difficulties. With 194 pupils on roll against a capacity of 196, and 15% eligible for free school meals, this is a small, full village primary that will suit Catholic families in the Esh Village area who want a local school with a broad range of SEND support and a solid, if not standout, academic record.

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