Thornton Primary School
Primary school · Birmingham
Thornton Road, Birmingham, B8 2LQ
About the school
- Type of school
- Community school, run by the council
- Ages
- 7 to 11
- Boys or girls
- Boys and girls
- Website
- https://www.thornton.bham.sch.uk/
- Telephone
- 0121 327 0824
- School number (URN)
- 103268
From Get Information about Schools, retrieved 2 September 2026. Schools update their own entries, so these can be out of date.
How big the school is
In 2024 this school had 600 places and 478 children on roll.
122 places were unfilled, which is 20% of the school.
In 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 the school had 545 children on roll on average, against 478 in 2024.
Its places have grown from 480 in 2009 to 600 in 2024.
Places are the whole school added up, every year group together. That is not the number of places a school offers to new children in one year.
Source: Department for Education school capacity collection.
Children in each year group
As counted on one day in January 2026, the most recent school census. These are children, not places.
Children in each year group at Thornton Primary School
| Year group | Children |
|---|---|
| Year 3 | 118 |
| Year 4 | 117 |
| Year 5 | 120 |
| Year 6 | 118 |
This is not a list of spare places. Places per year group are not published, and the count is from January. Children join and leave all year, so a year group that looked two under in January can be full by March.
If you are moving into the area and need a place during the school year, ask Birmingham, which handles admissions for this school. They hold the up-to-date position, which this page does not.
Who decides who gets a place
Birmingham sets the admission rules for this school, as it does for all its community and voluntary controlled schools.
Look for Birmingham's admission arrangements. An admission authority has to agree its rules every year and publish them.
Taken from the kind of school this is, as recorded by the Department for Education. We do not hold this school's rules themselves: a summary of an admission rule is not the rule, and only the admission authority's own published arrangements are binding.
How to apply
Applications for a place starting in September 2027 close on 15 January 2027, the date the School Admissions Code sets for every council in England.
Councils send every offer for primary school places on the same day, 16 April 2027 or the next working day.
You apply through the council where you live, even for a school in another area. You do not apply to the school. Find your council's primary school application on GOV.UK.
If you live in Birmingham, the council's own page explains how to apply there. Birmingham school admissions.
To ask about visiting the school, or anything else about it, contact the school. Website: https://www.thornton.bham.sch.uk/. Telephone: 0121 327 0824.
Links and dates can change. Your council's own website has the final word. The dates are set nationally by the School Admissions Code 2021. GOV.UK link checked 23 September 2026. Birmingham's page checked 23 September 2026. Contact details from Get Information about Schools.
How many families applied
Children usually start at this school in Year 3.
The government publishes application figures only for the years when most children in England start a new school: Reception and Year 7, and Year 9 at some upper schools. So we have no figures for how many families applied for this school's main intake.
The figures that are published are recorded against Reception, which this school does not have: in 2016, 60 families putting it first and 30 offers. They do not show how popular the school is, so we do not use them to compare it with other schools or with its own past.
Source: Department for Education school level applications and offers, and the January school census for the size of each year group.
Ofsted
Ofsted changed its inspection framework: the current one publishes several graded areas and no single overall grade, while the previous one published an overall effectiveness grade. Each inspection below states which framework produced it.
Ofsted ungraded inspection, 24 May 2023
School remains Good
Ofsted's report for this school
Source: Ofsted: state-funded school inspections management information, checked 14 September 2026. All sources.
If you are refused a place
In 2026, families in Birmingham lodged 1,231 appeals about a school place.
853 of them were heard by a panel and 94 succeeded, which is about 11 in every 100 heard.
The other 378 did not reach a panel. Most appeals that do not are withdrawn because a place comes up first.
This is a record of decisions already made. A panel hears one case at a time and decides it on what that family sets out, so these figures do not indicate what would happen in any particular appeal.
These count appeals about every school in Birmingham, not this school. Nobody publishes appeal figures school by school.
Source: Department for Education, admission appeals in England, reporting year 2026.
Waiting lists
Being refused a place does not end the application. Every admission authority has to keep a waiting list until at least 31 December of the school year the child would have started, and some keep them for longer.
A waiting list is not a queue. The rules say a child cannot be given priority for having joined it earlier, or for having applied earlier. The list is put back in order against the school's own admission rules every time a child is added, so a place can move further away as well as nearer.
Councils differ on whether a refused child goes onto the list automatically. The council that sent the refusal is the only place that can say which it does.
From the School Admissions Code 2021, paragraph 2.15.
Children with special educational needs
In January 2026, 3 of the 473 children here had an education, health and care plan. That is 1 in every 100. Across schools in England the middle figure is 4 in every 100.
A further 59 were on SEN support, which is help arranged by the school without a plan. That is 12 in every 100, against a middle figure of 15 in every 100 across England.
A school named in a child's education, health and care plan has to admit that child. That duty holds even when the school is full, and it sits outside the rules that decide who gets a place when there are more children than places. Which school is named is decided with the council while the plan is being written, not through the normal application.
Source: Department for Education, special educational needs in England, January 2026 census.
Who goes to this school
In January 2026, 290 of the 473 children here were known to be eligible for free school meals. That is 61 in every 100.
More children are eligible here than at half of primary schools in England, where the middle figure is 20 in every 100.
English was not the first language for 93 in every 100 children here. Across primary schools the middle figure is 10 in every 100.
This describes the children who go to this school. It is not a measure of the school. Most children go to a school near home, so it is mostly a fact about the streets around it.
This matters when reading results. Across the 15,153 schools we hold 2024 key stage 2 results for, the fifth with the fewest eligible children averaged 70% reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. The fifth with the most averaged 48%.
Those are averages of many schools all over the country. This school's own results are further down this page exactly as published.
Source: Department for Education school census, January 2026. Free school meal eligibility is counted for every pupil on roll.
Exam results
Published by the Department for Education for the whole year group. Figures for smaller cohorts are withheld by DfE to protect pupil privacy and appear here as a dash, not a zero.
Key stage 2: what these numbers are made of
Reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths.
Across the 3 years published, this measure ran from 62% in 2023 to 67% in 2024, a difference of 5 points.
Year 6 had 118 children, so one child is worth about 0.8 percentage points and that difference is about 6 children.
Half of schools in England move by 13 points or more across the same three years, so movement on this scale is ordinary rather than a sign of anything.
| Year | Expected standard in reading, writing & maths | Higher standard | Average reading score | Average maths score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 67.0% | 4.0% | 107.0 | 107.0 |
| 2023/24 | 62.0% | 3.0% | 104.0 | 105.0 |
| 2022/23 | 64.0% | 0.0% | 106.0 | 106.0 |
Teachers staying and leaving
These come from the School Workforce Census, which follows each teacher into the next year. The numbers count full-time jobs, so a teacher who works half the week counts as half. They are not a count of people.
The share of teachers who left, each year
Counted as full-time jobs rather than people, and counting a move to another state school as leaving this one.
| Census year | Teachers (FTE) | Still there a year later | Moved to another state school | Left state schools | Left in total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 23.2 | 22.2 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 4.3% |
| 2023/24 | 24.2 | 20.6 | 2.0 | 1.6 | 14.9% |
| 2022/23 | 25.0 | 23.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 8.0% |
| 2021/22 | 30.2 | 25.0 | 2.0 | 3.2 | 17.2% |
| 2020/21 | 27.2 | 26.6 | 0.0 | 0.6 | 2.2% |
| 2019/20 | 29.0 | 24.2 | 1.0 | 3.8 | 16.6% |
This is turnover among teachers. It says nothing about the headteacher or the senior leadership team: DfE publishes leadership retention separately and we do not hold it by school.
Catchment area
Nobody publishes a catchment area map for this school that we can read. That does not mean an address is outside its area. It means we hold no map, so we cannot tell you either way.
Where it is, and schools nearby
The 6 nearest primary schools we hold figures for, by straight-line distance from Thornton Primary School.
- Sladefield Infant School: 0.3 km (0.2 miles) north-west, Birmingham
- St Cuthbert's RC Junior and Infant (NC) School: 0.8 km (0.5 miles) south-east, Birmingham
- Ward End Primary School: 0.8 km (0.5 miles) north, Birmingham
- Alston Primary School: 1.1 km (0.7 miles) south, Birmingham
- Nansen Primary School: 1.2 km (0.7 miles) west, Birmingham
- Shaw Hill Primary School: 1.3 km (0.8 miles) west, Birmingham
Nearby and related
- Other schools near Thornton Primary School
- All schools in Birmingham
- Schools in the B8 postcode district
- What data we hold
- This page as JSON: the same figures, for software that would rather not read a web page
Where these figures come from
- Department for Education: Get Information about Schools. School identity, type, phase, address, contact details and how it is run
Retrieved 2 September 2026 - GOV.UK: apply for a school place. Where to find your council's primary school application. Link checked 23 September 2026
- Ofsted: state-funded school inspections management information. Inspection outcomes, published monthly
Retrieved 14 September 2026 - Department for Education: school-level applications and offers. Preferences and offers, 2014 to 2016 intakes
Retrieved 14 September 2026 - Department for Education: school pupils and their characteristics. Children in each year group, January 2026 census
- Department for Education: school capacity. Places and pupils on roll, 2009 to 2024
- Department for Education: key stage 2 attainment. Reading, writing and maths outcomes, by school
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - Department for Education: school workforce in England. Teacher turnover, by school, from the School Workforce Census
Retrieved 4 September 2026
Using this information
This is information only, not advice. It may have mistakes in it, or be out of date. Check with the school and the council before you decide anything. We collect these figures from official publications and check them, but mistakes can get through. If you find one, tell us.
Figures current as of 14 September 2026.
This page was updated on 5 November 2026. "Retrieved" is the date of our copy of each source, not the year its figures describe. How we compare schools.