William Patten Primary School

About William Patten Primary School

William Patten Primary School in Hackney holds an Ofsted Outstanding rating across every category from its most recent inspection in 2023, including quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, early years provision, and leadership and management. This is a clean sweep of top grades, and the school has held an Outstanding overall effectiveness rating since at least its previous inspection in 2012. On the most telling exam metric for a primary school, 85% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined at Key Stage 2 in the 2023/24 academic year. That is comfortably above the Hackney local authority average of 74% for the same measure, placing William Patten 9th out of 49 primary schools in the borough and inside the top 10% nationally. The school is also ranked 7th in Hackney when considering its overall performance, sitting just behind top-performing peers like Simon Marks Jewish Primary School and Southwold Primary School.

Digging deeper into the 2023/24 KS2 results, the school’s strengths are particularly clear in reading, where 93% of pupils reached the expected standard and 59% achieved a higher standard — a notably strong showing. In maths, 86% met the expected standard and 39% reached the higher standard, while in writing 88% met the expected standard and 27% achieved the higher mark. The average scaled scores tell a similar story: 109 in reading and 106 in maths, both above the national average of 100. Progress scores are not available in the data, so it is not possible to say how much value the school adds relative to pupils’ starting points, but the raw attainment figures are strong. With 19% of pupils reaching the higher standard across all three subjects, the school clearly stretches its more able pupils as well as supporting those who need it. The school’s 13.6% of pupils eligible for free school meals is below the national average, which may reflect the local demographic.

William Patten is a three-form entry primary with a nursery provision, and it is heavily oversubscribed: for 2025/26 entry, there were 322 applications for just 59 places, with 111 first-preference applications. That gives an oversubscription ratio of 5.46, meaning competition is fierce. The school sits within a 0.6 km radius of another Outstanding-rated primary, Grazebrook, so families in the area have strong local options. Facilities include a forest school, sensory room, art studios, ICT suite, sports hall, gymnasium, and a chapel. Sports on offer include cricket, tennis, dance, cross country, netball and swimming, while clubs range from choir and drama to coding and art club. The school’s SEND provision is broad, covering specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, moderate learning difficulty, social and emotional mental health needs, speech and language communication needs, visual impairment, physical disability, and autistic spectrum disorder. This is a school that suits families who can secure a place through the Hackney admissions process and who value strong academic outcomes alongside a wide range of enrichment activities.

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