The School Record

St Ethelbert's Roman Catholic Primary School, a Voluntary Academy

Primary school · Bolton

Melbourne Road, Bolton, BL3 5RL

This school became an academy on 1 November 2023. Before that it was a voluntary aided school, under St Ethelbert's RC Primary School (URN 105222).

About the school

Type of school
Academy
Academy trust
St Teresa of Calcutta Catholic Academy Trust
Became an academy
1 November 2023. Before that it was a voluntary aided school, under St Ethelbert's RC Primary School (URN 105222).
Ages
3 to 11
Boys or girls
Boys and girls
Religious character
Roman Catholic, Diocese of Salford
Nursery classes
Yes
Website
https://www.stethelberts.stoccat.org.uk/
Telephone
01204 333036
School number (URN)
150179

Other schools run by St Teresa of Calcutta Catholic Academy Trust

St Teresa of Calcutta Catholic Academy Trust runs 23 other schools with a page here. These are the 10 nearest.

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 Schools update their own entries, so these can be out of date.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 210 places and 192 children on roll.

18 places were unfilled, which is 9% of the school.

In 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 the school had 206 children on roll on average, against 192 in 2024. Some of those years are from its record under an earlier school number.

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 Ethelbert's Roman Catholic Primary School, a Voluntary Academy

Nursery 1 3, Nursery 2 26, Reception 20, Y1 21, Y2 24, Y3 30, Y4 27, Y5 28, Y6 283Nursery 126Nursery 220Reception21Y124Y230Y327Y428Y528Y6
Source: Department for Education school census, January 2026.
Year groupChildren
Nursery 1 3
Nursery 2 26
Reception 20
Year 1 21
Year 2 24
Year 3 30
Year 4 27
Year 5 28
Year 6 28

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 Bolton. 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 Bolton 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.

To ask about visiting the school, or anything else about it, contact the school. Website: https://www.stethelberts.stoccat.org.uk/. Telephone: 01204 333036.

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. 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, 17 families named St Ethelbert's Roman Catholic Primary School, a Voluntary Academy as their first preference, and the school made 20 offers.

That is 0.85 first preferences per place offered, higher than 13% of schools admitting at Reception in England that year.

More first preferences per place than 13% of comparable schools
Position among schools in England admitting at Reception, 2026 intake.

Fewer first preferences per place. Across the 3 most recent years held, first preferences per place averaged 0.96 in 2024 and 0.85 in 2026.

First preferences for this school fell 26%, from 24 a year in 2022–2023 to 18 in 2025–2026. Across all 97 schools in Bolton admitting at Reception, first preferences changed little over the same years, from 3,496 to 3,494. The school also offered fewer places over these years, 25 a year in 2022–2023 and 20 in 2025–2026, which is why the figure per place can move the other way from the count of families.

Counts of families, not places.

Across Bolton as a whole, 89.5% of families applying for a primary place for September 2026 were offered their first choice, and 96.8% 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 Bolton.

Compared with its own past

Fewer families than its recent average put this school first.

In 2026, 17 families put this school first. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 22 a year.

In 2026, 32 families named this school somewhere on their list. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 45 a year.

In 2026, every family who put this school first was offered a place here (17 of 17). In 2021 to 2025 it was every family, every year.

In 2026, 0 of the 20 offers went to children living outside Bolton. In 2021 to 2025 the average was 0 a year.

Some of the earlier years are for St Ethelbert's RC Primary School, the school this one replaced.

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 Ethelbert's Roman Catholic Primary School, a Voluntary Academy first, against the offers it made, for every intake year held.

First preferences from 25 in 2014 to 17 in 2026; Offers made from 27 in 2014 to 20 in 2026102030402014201620182020202220242026Offers made20First preferences17
Source: Department for Education, school-level applications and offers. Preferences count families. Offers count places given out on offer day. The vertical axis does not start at zero.

Figures before 2024 are from St Ethelbert's RC Primary School, the school this one replaced, before it became an academy. The government's school register links the two, and they are the same school.

Applications and offers at Reception, 13 intake years
Intake 1st preferences1st choice All preferencesAny choice Offers madeOffers 1st prefs per placePer place
2026 17 32 20 0.85
2025 18 32 21 0.86
2024 22 48 23 0.96
2023
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 19 37 21 0.90
2022
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 28 54 29 0.97
2021
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 22 52 29 0.76
2020
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 31 66 30 1.03
2019
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 26 53 28 0.93
2018
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 27 63 27 1.00
2017
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 23 50 24 0.96
2016
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 32 64 30 1.07
2015
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 35 71 30 1.17
2014
as St Ethelbert's RC Primary School		 25 59 27 0.93

“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 20 offers: 17 to families who had named it first and 1 to a family who named it second.

2 offers went to families who named it fourth or lower, or who were admitted another way.

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

No Ofsted inspection is held for this school.

If you are refused a place

In 2026, families in Bolton lodged 169 appeals about a primary school place.

113 of them were heard by a panel and 11 succeeded, which is about 10 in every 100 heard.

The other 56 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 52 infant class appeals heard in Bolton in 2026, 1 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 Bolton, 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, 7 of the 207 children here had an education, health and care plan. That is 3 in every 100. That is close to the middle for schools in England, where the middle figure is 4 in every 100.

A further 18 were on SEN support, which is help arranged by the school without a plan. That is 9 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, 63 of the 207 children here were known to be eligible for free school meals. That is 30 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 49 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 37% in 2023 to 62% in 2024, a difference of 25 points.

Year 6 had 28 children, so one child is worth about 3.6 percentage points and that difference is about 7 children.

Half of schools in England move by 13 points or more across the same three years.

A percentage of a group this small says more about which children happened to be in it than about the teaching.

Key stage 2 (end of primary)
Year Expected standard in reading, writing & maths Higher standard Average reading score Average maths score
2024/25 62.0% 0.0% 107.0 104.0
2023/24 37.0% 0.0% 103.0 102.0
2022/23 48.0% 3.0% 102.0 101.0

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 yearTeachers (FTE) Still there a year later Moved to another state school Left state schools Left in total
2024/25 10.1 9.5 0.0 0.6 5.9%

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 Ethelbert's Roman Catholic Primary School, a Voluntary Academy.

Nearby and related

Where these figures come from

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.