St Nicholas Catholic Academy

About St Nicholas Catholic Academy

St Nicholas Catholic Academy in Liverpool holds a Good rating from Ofsted following its most recent inspection in January 2025, with every graded category — quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision — all rated Good. The school’s most telling academic metric is its Key Stage 2 combined reading, writing and maths expected standard attainment, which sits at 56% of pupils. That figure is just three percentage points below the Liverpool local authority average of 59%, placing the school 65th out of 102 primary schools in the borough. While the school’s ranking places it in the bottom half nationally, its maths average score of 107 and reading average score of 106 both exceed the national benchmark of 100, suggesting solid foundations in core subjects. A quarter of pupils achieved the higher standard in reading, writing and maths combined, with maths seeing the strongest higher-standard performance at 33%.

The school’s Progress 8 scores are not available, but the Ofsted inspection report noted that pupils achieve well across the curriculum. In the 2023/24 academic year, 78% of pupils met the expected standard in maths and 72% in reading, with writing at 67%. The parent view snapshot, based on 14 responses collected between September 2024 and September 2025, is overwhelmingly positive: 100% of respondents would recommend the school, and 79% strongly agreed that their child is happy there. Strong agreement was also high for the school having high expectations (79%) and for pupils doing well (71%). The school has a nursery provision and serves children from age 3 to 11, with a capacity of 210 and currently 188 pupils on roll. A third of pupils are eligible for free school meals, which is above the national average.

Admissions for the 2025/26 intake show the school is oversubscribed: 26 applications for 16 places, with 11 first-preference offers made. Facilities include a forest school, sensory room, chapel, sports hall, and playing fields, alongside clubs such as choir, eco club, chess, and coding. The school offers a range of sports including swimming, football, and cricket. SEND provisions cover autistic spectrum disorder, speech and language needs, social and emotional mental health, dyslexia, and visual impairment. The nearest outstanding-rated primary school is Smithdown Primary School, 1.5 km away. St Nicholas Catholic Academy is a Roman Catholic state primary that will suit families seeking a faith-based setting with strong parental satisfaction and a broad range of extracurricular opportunities, particularly those who value a school that is well-regarded within its community despite not being among the highest-performing locally on academic rankings.

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