Croft Community School, Stanley
Data last updated 12 Sept 2026
Key Information
DfE GIASOfsted Rating
Ofsted · 8 months agoReport card - no overall grade (new Ofsted framework from Sep 2024)
Ofsted Insights
What This School Does Well
Croft Community School is a kind, caring place where your child will feel safe and supported. Staff know pupils really well and provide excellent pastoral care, with strong behaviour and attendance support. The school celebrates diversity, teaches life skills, and prepares older pupils well for their next steps through meaningful work experience and careers guidance.
Key Strengths
- Strong safeguarding culture with open communication and pupils feeling safe
- Excellent behaviour and attendance support with creative approaches to removing barriers
- High-quality pastoral care and strong relationships between staff and pupils
- Well-designed careers programme with effective links to local providers and colleges
- Effective early reading instruction using phonics
Areas for Improvement
- Inconsistent teaching quality across the school means pupils don't make progress quickly enough
- Learning activities are not always matched to what pupils already know and can do
- Gaps in pupils' knowledge and skills are not identified or addressed quickly
- Some pupils with special needs are not supported well enough to meet their individual goals
- Leadership and governance are still developing after recent changes to the school structure
Safeguarding
Safeguarding standards are met. The school has created an open and positive culture of safeguarding where all legal requirements are met and pupils feel safe.
Extracurricular Activities
Dungeons and dragons, horse riding, hair and beauty activities, gardening, art, music, structured lunchtime activities
Croft Community School is a caring community where pupils feel safe and happy, supported by staff who know them well. However, teaching quality is inconsistent across the school, which limits the progress pupils make in their learning.
At a Glance
58.3%
Free School Meals
No
Boarding
No
Nursery
No
Sixth Form
SpLD - Specific Learning Difficulty, SLCN - Speech, language and Communication, ASD - Autistic Spectrum Disorder, MLD - Moderate Learning Difficulty
SEN Provision
No
Special Measures
Primary Performance (KS2)
Academic year 2025/26KS2 Results (% meeting expected standard)
Reading has improved from 0% to 4%. Maths has remained stable at around 0%. Writing has declined from 8% to 0%.
Class Sizes
0.0
Avg class size
0
Total classes
2024/25 academic year
Getting There
Bus Stops
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Capacity & Demand
School Occupancy
112%
Over capacity
316 pupils
281 capacity
35 places over capacity
Area Demand Pressure - Stanley
Based on MHCLG housing supply data for Stanley
Admissions Demand - County Durham
Places available
5,856
Applications
5,186
Got 1st preference
94.1%
Got preferred school
98.5%
Secondary admissions across County Durham (2025/26)
Inspection History(13)
House Prices
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SEN Provision
How many pupils have special educational needs, what types of support the school provides, and how it compares to similar schools.
Pupil Demographics
The school's pupil mix - ethnicity breakdown, free school meals eligibility, and English as an additional language. Useful context when evaluating school fit.
Teachers & Staff
Teacher qualification rates, pupil-to-teacher ratio, staff turnover, and salary data. Shows how well-resourced and stable the school's workforce is.
Pupil Absence2024/25
13.65328%
Overall absence
36.45485%
Persistent absence
299
Enrolments
Absence trend
Source: DfE pupil absence statistics. Persistent absence = pupils missing 10%+ sessions.
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Feeder Primary Schools
Primary schools that likely feed into this school, based on proximity
Croft Community School
Nearby Schools
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