St Mary's Catholic First School, Dorchester
Primary school · Dorset
Lucetta Lane, Dorchester, DT1 2DD
This school became an academy on 1 April 2014. Before that it was a voluntary aided school, under its earlier school number, URN 113827.
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First preferences per place, 2026
1.14
How many families named it first, for each place it gave out. Higher than 87% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.
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Offers made, 2026
29
Places given out on offer day. Not the number of places the school had, which is not published per year group.
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Latest Ofsted
School remains Good
Ofsted ungraded inspection, January 2023.
About the school
- Type of school
- Academy
- Academy trust
- Plymouth Cast
- Became an academy
- 1 April 2014. Before that it was a voluntary aided school, under its earlier school number, URN 113827.
- Ages
- 2 to 9
- Boys or girls
- Boys and girls
- Religious character
- Roman Catholic, Diocese of Plymouth
- Nursery classes
- Yes
- Website
- http://www.stmarysdorchester.dorset.sch.uk/
- Telephone
- 01305 262258
- School number (URN)
- 140771
Other schools run by Plymouth Cast
Plymouth Cast runs 33 other schools with a page here. These are the 10 nearest.
- St Augustine's Catholic Primary School, Weymouth, Weymouth (7.4 miles away)
- St Mary & St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Wareham (9.2 miles away)
- St Catherine's Roman Catholic School, Bridport (14.4 miles away)
- St Mary's Catholic Primary School, Marnhull, Sturminster Newton (19.5 miles away)
- St Mary's Catholic Primary School, Poole, Poole (20.3 miles away)
- St Mary's Catholic Primary School, Swanage, Swanage (21.2 miles away)
- St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Poole, Poole (22.3 miles away)
- Christ The King Catholic Primary School, Bournemouth (23.1 miles away)
- St Mary's Catholic Primary School, Axminster, Axminster (25.2 miles away)
- St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Exmouth, Exmouth (43.2 miles away)
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 Schools update their own entries, so these can be out of date.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 150 places and 151 children on roll.
It held 1 more child than its recorded capacity.
In 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 the school had 152 children on roll on average, against 151 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 St Mary's Catholic First School, Dorchester
| Year group | Children |
|---|---|
| Nursery 1 | 9 |
| Nursery 2 | 19 |
| Reception | 30 |
| Year 1 | 29 |
| Year 2 | 29 |
| Year 3 | 32 |
| Year 4 | 29 |
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 Dorset. Councils handle applications made during the school year, including for schools that set their own admission rules. They hold the up-to-date position, which this page does not.
Who decides who gets a place
This school sets its own admission rules, through its academy trust, rather than Dorset setting them.
Look on the school's own website for its admission arrangements. An admission authority has to agree its rules every year and publish them. The council still takes the application.
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 Dorset, the council's own page explains how to apply there. Dorset school admissions.
To ask about visiting the school, or anything else about it, contact the school. Website: http://www.stmarysdorchester.dorset.sch.uk/. Telephone: 01305 262258.
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. Dorset's page checked 29 September 2026. Contact details from Get Information about Schools.
How many families applied
Preferences expressed and offers made at Reception, as published by the Department for Education. These describe demand, not whether a particular child would be offered a place.
In the 2026 intake, 33 families named St Mary's Catholic First School, Dorchester as their first preference, and the school made 29 offers.
That is 1.14 first preferences per place offered, higher than 87% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.
More first preferences per place. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 1.03 in 2022–2023 and 1.15 in 2025–2026.
First preferences for this school rose 11%, from 30 a year in 2022–2023 to 34 in 2025–2026. Across all 118 schools in Dorset admitting at Reception, first preferences changed little over the same years, from 2,956 to 2,860.
Counts of families, not places.
Across Dorset as a whole, 93.9% of families applying for a primary place for September 2026 were offered their first choice, and 99.0% were offered one of the three schools they named. That is a figure for the council, not for this school. How the 2026 round went in Dorset.
Compared with its own past
About the same number of families as its recent average put this school first.
In 2026, 33 families put this school first. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 34 a year.
In 2026, 88 families named this school somewhere on their list. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 85 a year.
In 2026, 88 in every 100 families who put this school first were offered a place here (29 of 33). In 2021 to 2025 it was 85 in every 100.
In 2026, 0 of the 29 offers went to children living outside Dorset. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 0 a year.
Each figure is compared only with the same figure at this school. "About the same" means within 10 in every 100 of the average.
First preferences and offers at Reception
Families naming St Mary's Catholic First School, Dorchester first, against the offers it made, for every intake year held.
Figures before 2015 are from this school's earlier record, under its old school number (URN 113827), before it became an academy. The government's school register links the two, and they are the same school.
| Intake | 1st preferences1st choice | All preferencesAny choice | Offers madeOffers | 1st prefs per placePer place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 33 | 88 | 29 | 1.14 |
| 2025 | 35 | 93 | 30 | 1.17 |
| 2024 | 43 | 101 | 29 | 1.48 |
| 2023 | 34 | 88 | 30 | 1.13 |
| 2022 | 27 | 71 | 29 | 0.93 |
| 2021 | 33 | 72 | 30 | 1.10 |
| 2020 | 41 | 97 | 30 | 1.37 |
| 2019 | 22 | 65 | 25 | 0.88 |
| 2018 | 24 | 82 | 25 | 0.96 |
| 2017 | 20 | 87 | 23 | 0.87 |
| 2016 | 27 | 82 | 30 | 0.90 |
| 2015 | 30 | 73 | 30 | 1.00 |
| 2014 old school number |
26 | 85 | 27 | 0.96 |
“Offers made” is the number of offers on offer day, not the number of places the school has.
Source: Department for Education: school-level applications and offers, checked 14 September 2026. All sources.
Where families put this school on their list
In 2026 this school made 29 offers, and every one of them went to a family who had named it first.
A school is not allowed to treat a family differently because of where it sat on their list. The School Admissions Code says an admission authority must not give extra priority to children whose parents rank preferred schools in a particular order.
The order is used at the end, by the council, and not by the school. Where more than one school could take a child, the council offers the one the family put highest.
Leaving the other boxes empty does not change how this school considers an application. If none of the schools a family names can offer a place, the council has to offer one at a school that has room, and that school may be further away.
Source: Department for Education school level applications and offers, and the School Admissions Code 2021, paragraphs 1.9 and 2.11.
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, 11 January 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 Dorset lodged 35 appeals about a primary school place.
27 of them were heard by a panel and 6 succeeded, which is about 22 in every 100 heard.
The other 8 did not reach a panel. Most appeals that do not are withdrawn because a place comes up first.
Reception is an infant class, and the law caps an infant class at 30 children. A panel hearing an appeal about an infant class can only agree in three situations: the place was refused by mistake, the admission rules were not applied properly, or the decision was one no reasonable council would have made. It cannot simply decide that the child should have the place.
Of the 7 infant class appeals heard in Dorset in 2026, 0 succeeded.
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 Dorset, 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, 4 of the 177 children here had an education, health and care plan. That is 2 in every 100. Across schools in England the middle figure is 4 in every 100.
A further 12 were on SEN support, which is help arranged by the school without a plan. That is 7 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, 9 of the 177 children here were known to be eligible for free school meals. That is 5 in every 100.
Fewer 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 15 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.
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 | 6.1 | 5.9 | 0.0 | 0.2 | 3.3% |
| 2023/24 | 5.7 | 5.3 | 0.4 | 0.0 | 7.0% |
| 2022/23 | 6.8 | 5.4 | 1.0 | 0.4 | 20.6% |
| 2021/22 | 5.6 | 4.6 | 1.0 | 0.0 | 17.9% |
| 2020/21 | 8.0 | 6.0 | 0.0 | 2.0 | 25.0% |
| 2019/20 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0% |
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 St Mary's Catholic First School, Dorchester.
- Manor Park Church of England First School: 0.4 km (0.3 miles) south, Dorchester
- The Prince of Wales School: 1.8 km (1.1 miles) west, Dorchester
- Damers First School: 2.4 km (1.5 miles) west, Dorchester
- St Mary's Church of England First School, Charminster: 3.4 km (2.1 miles) north-west, Dorchester
- Broadmayne First School and Nursery: 4.5 km (2.8 miles) south-east, Dorchester
- Frome Valley CofE First School: 6.9 km (4.3 miles) east, Dorchester
Nearby and related
- Other schools near St Mary's Catholic First School, Dorchester
- All schools in Dorset
- Schools in the DT1 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 2026 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: 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.