Yewdale School

About Yewdale School

Yewdale School is a state primary in Cumberland, a local authority where only five of 144 primary schools hold an Outstanding Ofsted rating. The school itself ranks 93rd out of those 144, placing it in the bottom half of the authority. Among its local peers, the top performers are Jericho Primary School, Irthington Village School, and Shankhill CofE Primary School, all of which score higher on the same ranking metric. Yewdale’s ranking score of 35 places it well behind those three, but the school does serve a community with 17.3% of pupils eligible for free school meals, which is above the national average and suggests a more challenging intake than some of its higher-ranked neighbours. The school is non-religious, mixed, and takes children from age 3 to 11, with a nursery on site. Its most recent Ofsted inspection in 2023 confirmed it remains Good, a notable improvement from its previous Inadequate rating.

Academically, Yewdale’s Key Stage 2 results for 2023/24 show a mixed picture. The proportion of pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing, and maths combined was 35%, well below the Cumberland local authority average of 54%. In individual subjects, 57% met the expected standard in reading, 49% in maths, and 63% in writing. At the higher standard, the figures drop sharply: 10% in reading, 8% in maths, and 0% in writing. Average scaled scores were 101 in reading and 100 in maths, both close to the national baseline of 100. Progress scores are not available in the data, so it is unclear how much value the school adds relative to pupils’ starting points. The school’s national ranking places it in the bottom 5% of all primaries on the combined expected standard metric, which parents should weigh alongside the context of its intake and the significant improvement in its Ofsted rating.

Yewdale offers a range of facilities including a gymnasium, art studios, a library, a sensory room, and a chapel. Sports provision covers tennis, rounders, football, gymnastics, dance, athletics, and cricket, while clubs include coding, book club, and chess. The school has a strong SEND offer, with provisions for specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, social, emotional and mental health needs, speech, language and communication needs, physical disabilities, and autistic spectrum disorder. Admissions are oversubscribed: for 2025/26, there were 83 applications for 30 places, with 41 first-preference applications and 30 offers made to first-preference families, giving an oversubscription ratio of 2.77. This suggests the school is popular locally despite its academic ranking. Yewdale will suit families who value a broad range of facilities and SEND support, and who are comfortable with a school that has improved its Ofsted rating but still has ground to make up on academic outcomes compared with the local average.

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