Higham St John's Church of England Primary School
URN 119387 · Primary · Voluntary controlled school · Lancashire
Higham Hall Road, Burnley, BB12 9EU
Ofsted category of concern: Special measures
At its inspection on 27 January 2026 (Ofsted report card (current framework)), this school was placed in the category special measures.
Ofsted judged the school to be failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education, and not to have the capacity to make the necessary improvements without help.
This is about that one inspection. Schools do come out of these categories. This page does not tell you where the school stands today. Check that with Ofsted.
How many families applied
Preferences expressed and offers made at Reception, as published by the Department for Education. These describe demand. They do not indicate whether any particular child would be offered a place.
In the 2025 intake, 7 families named Higham St John's Church of England Primary School as their first preference, and the school made 9 offers.
No per-place figure is published for this year: the school offered 9 places, too few for a ratio to mean anything.
| Intake | 1st preferences | All preferences | Offers made | 1st prefs per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 7 | 34 | 9 | - |
| 2024 | 18 | 52 | 20 | 0.90 |
| 2023 | 13 | 64 | 16 | 0.81 |
| 2022 | 15 | 54 | 20 | 0.75 |
| 2021 | 22 | 65 | 20 | 1.10 |
| 2020 | 20 | 77 | 20 | 1.00 |
| 2019 | 18 | 64 | 20 | 0.90 |
| 2018 | 24 | 70 | 20 | 1.20 |
| 2017 | 16 | 75 | 20 | 0.80 |
| 2016 | 29 | 70 | 20 | 1.45 |
| 2015 | 28 | 74 | 20 | 1.40 |
| 2014 | 22 | 69 | 20 | 1.10 |
“Offers made” counts the offers the school made. It is not the number of places the school had, so please do not read it as one.
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 report card (current framework), 27 January 2026
Category of concern: Special measures
Safeguarding: Met
Inclusion: Needs attention
Curriculum and teaching: Urgent improvement
Achievement: Needs attention
Attendance and behaviour: Needs attention
Personal development and wellbeing: Expected standard
Early years: Urgent improvement
Leadership and governance: Urgent improvement
The current framework does not award an overall grade.
Ofsted's report for this school
Ofsted ungraded inspection, 15 September 2021
School remains Good
Ofsted's report for this school
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.
| Year | Expected standard in reading, writing & maths | Higher standard | Average reading score | Average maths score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 53.0% | 6.0% | 103.0 | 104.0 |
| 2023/24 | 59.0% | 12.0% | 107.0 | 104.0 |
| 2022/23 | 60.0% | 5.0% | 107.0 | 105.0 |
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.
| Census year | Teachers (FTE) | Still there a year later | Moved to another state school | Left state schools | Left in total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 5.8 | 5.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% |
| 2023/24 | 5.6 | 5.6 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% |
| 2022/23 | 6.3 | 5.3 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 15.9% |
| 2021/22 | 7.0 | 6.0 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 14.3% |
| 2020/21 | 6.0 | 6.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% |
| 2019/20 | 6.0 | 5.0 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 16.7% |
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
The 6 nearest primary schools we hold figures for, by straight-line distance from Higham St John's Church of England Primary School.
- Padiham St Leonard's Voluntary Aided Church of England Primary School: 3.0 km (1.9 miles) south-west, Padiham, Burnley
- Newchurch-In-Pendle St Mary's Church of England Primary School: 3.1 km (1.9 miles) north-east, Burnley
- Padiham Primary School: 3.1 km (2.0 miles) south, Burnley
- Sabden Primary School: 3.3 km (2.1 miles) west, Sabden
- St Mary Magdalene Catholic Primary School, a Voluntary Academy: 3.4 km (2.1 miles) south-east, Burnley
- Wellfield Methodist and Anglican Church School: 3.4 km (2.1 miles) south-east, Burnley
Nearby and related
- Other schools near Higham St John's Church of England Primary School
- All schools in Lancashire
- Schools in the BB12 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 and address
Retrieved 2 September 2026 - Ofsted: state-funded school inspections management information. Inspection outcomes, published monthly
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - Department for Education: school-level applications and offers. Preferences and offers, 2014 to 2025 intakes
Retrieved 4 September 2026 - 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
This page was made on 9 September 2026. "Retrieved" means the day we downloaded the data. It is not the day the data was written, so the figures can be about an earlier year. How we compare schools.