The Gattons Infant School

About The Gattons Infant School

The Gattons Infant School sits within West Sussex local authority, a large county with 226 primary schools, only seven of which hold an Outstanding rating. The school itself is rated Good, placing it in the solid middle tier of local provision. Among its peers in the area, the top-ranked schools are Barns Green Primary School and Heron Way Primary School, both scoring 86 on the local ranking metric, with Aldingbourne Primary School close behind at 84. The Gattons is a state-funded, mixed-gender infant school for children aged five to seven, with no nursery or sixth form provision. It is led by headteacher Sarah Gospel and serves 244 pupils against a capacity of 270, meaning it is not yet full. The school has a non-religious character and a relatively low proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals at 12 per cent, which is below the national average and suggests a broadly affluent catchment.

The Gattons has undergone a notable improvement journey in its most recent Ofsted inspection, carried out in May 2024. The previous inspection in September 2021 had rated the school Requires Improvement across all key areas, including quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, and leadership. The 2024 inspection upgraded every category to Good, with the overall effectiveness, quality of education, early years provision, personal development, behaviour and attitudes, and leadership and management all now rated Good. This represents a significant turnaround in under three years. While the school does not publish Key Stage 2 results because it only covers infants up to Year 2, the local authority average for KS2 attainment is 56 per cent, which provides a benchmark for the broader primary landscape. The school’s focus on early years is reflected in its Good rating for early years provision, and its personal development score also sits at Good, indicating a strong start for younger children.

The school offers a range of facilities including a library, art studios, ICT suite, sensory room, outdoor playground, dining hall, forest school, and even a chapel, which is unusual for a non-religious state school. Sports provision includes tennis, swimming, cricket, athletics, and rounders, and clubs extend to chess, gardening, and eco club. The school has identified SEND provisions for social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, autistic spectrum disorder, and other difficulties or disabilities. For the 2025/26 intake, the school was oversubscribed: it offered 87 first-preference places from 145 total applications, giving an oversubscription ratio of 1.63. This suggests strong local demand, particularly from families who prioritise a focused infant-only setting with a broad range of enrichment activities and a clear recent trajectory of improvement.

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