St Mary's CofE First School & Nursery
URN 142514 · Primary · Academy converter · Dorset
Station Road, Ferndown, BH22 0JF
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, 16 families named St Mary's CofE First School & Nursery as their first preference, and the school made 21 offers.
That is 0.76 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 5% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.
position among schools in England admitting at Reception, 2025 intake
Fewer families are naming it first. Across the 5 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 1.15 in 2021–2022 and 0.86 in 2024–2025.
| Intake | 1st preferences | All preferences | Offers made | 1st prefs per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 16 | 52 | 21 | 0.76 |
| 2024 | 21 | 53 | 22 | 0.95 |
| 2023 | 19 | 48 | 27 | 0.70 |
| 2022 | 37 | 69 | 30 | 1.23 |
| 2021 | 32 | 63 | 30 | 1.07 |
| 2020 | 15 | 48 | 19 | 0.79 |
| 2019 | 31 | 67 | 30 | 1.03 |
| 2018 | 21 | 42 | 24 | 0.88 |
| 2017 | 25 | 57 | 28 | 0.89 |
| 2016 | 22 | 56 | 30 | 0.73 |
“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 graded inspection (previous framework), 23 April 2025
Overall effectiveness: Not judged
Quality of education: Good
Behaviour and attitudes: Good
Personal development: Good
Leadership and management: Good
Early years: Good
Sixth form / post-16: 9
Ofsted's report for this school
Ofsted ungraded inspection, 19 October 2023
School remains Good (Concerns) - S5 Next
Ofsted's report for this school
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 | 7.0 | 5.0 | 2.0 | 0.0 | 28.6% |
| 2023/24 | 6.4 | 5.0 | 0.0 | 1.4 | 21.9% |
| 2022/23 | 6.8 | 4.8 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 29.4% |
| 2021/22 | 6.2 | 4.8 | 0.0 | 1.4 | 22.6% |
| 2020/21 | 6.4 | 5.4 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 15.6% |
| 2019/20 | 6.4 | 6.4 | 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
The 6 nearest primary schools we hold figures for, by straight-line distance from St Mary's CofE First School & Nursery.
- Oakhurst Community First School: 1.0 km (0.6 miles) south-east, Ferndown
- Three Legged Cross First and Nursery School: 2.9 km (1.8 miles) north, Wimborne
- Ferndown First School: 3.1 km (1.9 miles) south, Ferndown
- Parley First School: 4.0 km (2.5 miles) south, Ferndown
- St Ives Primary & Nursery School: 4.8 km (3.0 miles) east, Ringwood
- Verwood Church of England First School: 4.8 km (3.0 miles) north, Verwood
Nearby and related
- Other schools near St Mary's CofE First School & Nursery
- All schools in Dorset
- Schools in the BH22 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, 2016 to 2025 intakes
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.