Blessed John Duckett Catholic Primary School, Tow Law
URN 148916 · Primary · Academy converter · County Durham
Smith Street, Bishop Auckland, DL13 4AU
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, 10 families named Blessed John Duckett Catholic Primary School, Tow Law as their first preference, and the school made 10 offers.
That is 1.00 first preferences per place offered, which places it above 53% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.
position among schools in England admitting at Reception, 2025 intake
Little change. Across the 3 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 1.0 in 2023 and 1.0 in 2025.
| Intake | 1st preferences | All preferences | Offers made | 1st prefs per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 10 | 13 | 10 | 1.00 |
| 2024 | 13 | 14 | 12 | 1.08 |
| 2023 | 10 | 13 | 10 | 1.00 |
| 2022 | 8 | 9 | 8 | - |
“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), 28 January 2025
Overall effectiveness: Not judged
Quality of education: Good
Behaviour and attitudes: Good
Personal development: Good
Leadership and management: Good
Early years: Outstanding
Sixth form / post-16: 9
Ofsted's report for this school
Ofsted ungraded inspection, 10 November 2021
This inspection relates to a predecessor of the current school.
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 | 11.0% | 0.0% | 103.0 | 98.0 |
| 2023/24 | 43.0% | 14.0% | 107.0 | 100.0 |
| 2022/23 | 75.0% | 0.0% | 109.0 | 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.
| Census year | Teachers (FTE) | Still there a year later | Moved to another state school | Left state schools | Left in total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 5.4 | 4.4 | 0.0 | 1.0 | 18.5% |
| 2023/24 | 4.9 | 4.4 | 0.0 | 0.5 | 10.2% |
| 2022/23 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 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 Blessed John Duckett Catholic Primary School, Tow Law.
- Tow Law Millennium Primary School: 0.9 km (0.6 miles) south, Bishop Auckland
- Wolsingham Primary School: 4.7 km (2.9 miles) south-west, Bishop Auckland
- Stanley (Crook) Primary School: 4.9 km (3.0 miles) east, Crook
- Hartside Primary Academy: 5.2 km (3.2 miles) south-east, Crook
- Crook Primary School: 5.9 km (3.6 miles) south-east, Crook
- St Cuthbert's Catholic Primary School, Crook: 5.9 km (3.7 miles) south-east, Crook
Nearby and related
- Other schools near Blessed John Duckett Catholic Primary School, Tow Law
- All schools in County Durham
- Schools in the DL13 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, 2022 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.