St Paul's CofE Primary School

About St Paul's CofE Primary School

St Paul's CofE Primary School in Salford holds a Good rating from its most recent Ofsted inspection in 2025, but the detail tells a more interesting story. Inspectors awarded Outstanding marks for both personal development and behaviour and attitudes, while quality of education and leadership were judged Good. The school’s strongest academic metric is its Key Stage 2 combined reading, writing and maths expected standard, which sits at 74% — well above the Salford local authority average of 61%. That places St Paul’s 12th out of 65 primary schools in the borough, comfortably inside the top 25% nationally. The school also performs strongly on individual subjects: 95% of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, 86% in maths, and 81% in writing. Higher-standard attainment is more modest, with 7% achieving the higher benchmark across all three subjects, though reading and maths higher scores sit at 25% and 21% respectively.

The school’s Ofsted history shows consistency — it was also rated Good in its previous inspection in 2011, with leadership and management judged Good then too. The 2025 inspection noted that early years provision is now Good, having been rated as Satisfactory (the equivalent of Requires Improvement under the old framework) previously. With 367 pupils on roll against a capacity of 420, the school is not oversubscribed: for the 2025/26 intake, it received 43 applications for 46 places, with 28 first-preference offers made. The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals is 40.9%, significantly above the national average, which adds context to the school’s strong academic performance. Parent views are overwhelmingly positive — 94% of the 18 respondents would recommend the school, and 94% strongly agreed that their child is happy there.

Facilities include a sports hall, gymnasium, playing fields, ICT suite, music rooms, a sensory room and a chapel. The school offers a range of clubs including book club, science club, chess, art club and film club, plus sports such as football, cricket, athletics and cross country. SEND provision is broad, covering specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, speech and language needs, hearing and visual impairment, physical disability, social and emotional mental health needs, and autistic spectrum disorder. The school also has nursery provision for children from age three. For families looking for a Church of England primary in Salford with strong academic outcomes, a calm and well-behaved environment, and a clear focus on personal development, St Paul’s is a solid choice that is comfortably oversubscribed in terms of quality, if not in raw application numbers.

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