St Nicholas Catholic Primary School (Birmingham)
Encyclopedia
St. Nicholas Catholic Primary School is a voluntary aided
Voluntary aided school
A voluntary aided school is a state-funded school in England and Wales in which a foundation or trust owns the school buildings, contributes to building costs and has a substantial influence in the running of the school...

 Catholic
Catholic school
Catholic schools are maintained parochial schools or education ministries of the Catholic Church. the Church operates the world's largest non-governmental school system...

 primary school located in Sutton Coldfield
Sutton Coldfield
Sutton Coldfield is a suburb of Birmingham, in the West Midlands of England. Sutton is located about from central Birmingham but has borders with Erdington and Kingstanding. Sutton is in the northeast of Birmingham, with a population of 105,000 recorded in the 2001 census...

, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. There are currently about 210 student
Student
A student is a learner, or someone who attends an educational institution. In some nations, the English term is reserved for those who attend university, while a schoolchild under the age of eighteen is called a pupil in English...

s. The school is oversubscribed and has exceptional academic standards.

It opened in 1967 after the demand for Catholic Education within Boldmere
Boldmere
Boldmere is a residential area of Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, England. It is bordered by New Oscott, Sutton Park, Wylde Green and Erdington, and is in the ward of Sutton Vesey.- Toponymy :...

 and New Oscott
New Oscott
New Oscott is an area of Birmingham, England.It was named after the Oscott area of Birmingham, when St. Mary's College, the Roman Catholic seminary, moved from that site to the new one. The original then became known as Old Oscott....

 became too great. The school is located at the rear of St Nicholas' church, which was constructed in 1957. St Nicholas is a Member of the Catholic Partnership.

Academic standards

Following their inspection in March 2006 Ofsted
Office for Standards in Education
The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills is the non-ministerial government department of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools In England ....

 assessed the school as Outstanding, the highest available category. They said:
"This is an outstanding school where pupils are extremely well cared for and achieve very highly ... when they leave school at eleven they consistently reach exceptionally high standards. All groups of pupils make outstanding progress because teaching is consistently at least good, and often exemplary."

The school was described as the best primary school in Birmingham in December 2004.

In the Key Stage 2
Key Stage 2
Key Stage 2 is the legal term for the four years of schooling in maintained schools in England and Wales normally known as Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6, when pupils are aged between 7 and 11. The term is applied differently in Northern Ireland where it refers to pupils in Year 5, Year 6 and...

 tests in English, maths and science St Nicholas scored a perfect 300 in 2001 and was ranked the best school in the Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...

.

The school has a notably low rate of absenteeism
Absenteeism
Absenteeism is a habitual pattern of absence from a duty or obligation. Traditionally, absenteeism has been viewed as an indicator of poor individual performance, as well as a breach of an implicit contract between employee and employer; it was seen as a management problem, and framed in economic...

. At 2.7% authorised absences are about half the local and national average whilst there were no recorded unauthorised absences.

Controversy

The then Headteacher Margaret McConnell caused controversy when she said, in December 2004, that school performance tables were just a snapshot of one day and that "it is more important that you are educating the whole child ... their attitude to other people in the community. It is preparing them for the wider world."

External links

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