Walton on the Naze Primary School

About Walton on the Naze Primary School

Walton on the Naze Primary School is a state-funded mixed primary in the Essex coastal town of Tendring, and it sits in a competitive local landscape. Among the 444 primary schools in the same local authority, it ranks 351st, placing it in the bottom half of the table. The top-performing peers in the area include St Thomas More's Catholic Primary School in Colchester, Stambridge Primary School, and Great Totham Primary School, each scoring at or near the top of the ranking metric. The school is led by headteacher Suzie Bliss and has no religious character. With 199 pupils on roll against a capacity of 210, it is not quite full, but it is oversubscribed: for the 2025/26 intake, there were 38 applications for 18 places, and all 18 first-preference offers were taken up, giving an oversubscription ratio of 2.11. Over half of its pupils — 55.1 per cent — are eligible for free school meals, a figure well above the national average, reflecting the socio-economic context of the area.

Academically, the school's most recent Ofsted inspection in June 2022 rated it Good overall, with Good in every category: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and early years provision. This is consistent with its previous inspection in 2016, which also rated overall effectiveness as Good. At Key Stage 2, the school's results for the 2023/24 academic year show that 36 per cent of pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined — significantly below the local authority average of 62 per cent. In reading, 50 per cent met the expected standard and 18 per cent achieved a higher score; in maths, 39 per cent met the expected standard and just 4 per cent reached the higher threshold. Writing saw 39 per cent at expected and none at the higher level. Average scores were 101 in reading and 99 in maths. Nationally, the school ranks in the bottom 6 per cent of primaries on the combined expected standard metric.

The school offers a range of facilities including a Forest School, a sports hall, a sensory room, a dining hall and an ICT suite. Sports on offer include tennis, rounders, athletics, netball, cricket, gymnastics and cross country, and there are clubs such as book club, drama, chess, science club, film club and coding. For pupils with additional needs, the school provides for specific learning difficulties including dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, physical disability and autistic spectrum disorder. There is no nursery provision and no sixth form. Given its oversubscribed status and high proportion of pupils on free school meals, this is a school that serves its local community closely, and families who value a Good-rated school with strong SEND support and a forest school programme may find it a good fit, though those prioritising top academic outcomes may want to look at higher-ranked peers in the area.

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