St Helen's Primary School, Swansea

St Helen's Primary School is an English-medium school in Wales. Welsh schools are inspected by Estyn rather than Ofsted, and its latest report is published on Estyn's website.

It had 270 pupils in the 2025/26 school census.

23% of pupils are eligible for free school meals (three-year average).

Of its pupils, 10% have additional learning needs (23% in 2020/21); 65% are learning English as an additional language; and 88% are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.

Year groups range from 28 pupils (Year 3) to 33 (Year 2).

Its delegated budget for 2026-27 works out at £5,589 per pupil, against £4,265 in 2021-22. It carried forward £214k of reserves at the end of 2024-25.

Estyn's report on its February 2024 inspection summarises St Helen's Primary School like this:

"St Helen’s Primary School is vibrant, welcoming and highly inclusive. Pupils enjoy coming to school and make good progress in their learning and well-being. They feel safe, well cared for and valued and this helps them to become confident and capable learners. The diverse faiths, languages and cultures of the community the school serves are embraced and celebrated, and staff and pupils treat each other with friendliness, empathy and respect. The leadership of the school is highly effective. The headteacher provides determined and compassionate leadership that helps staff, pupils and their families to succeed. The senior leadership team and governing body work together well to ensure that they fully understand the school’s strengths and areas for improvement."

"This helps them to plan how best to use the school’s budget, which they do effectively to ensure that the school is well staffed and resourced. There is a strong culture of collaboration and mutual support amongst staff. The school benefits from a strong team of dedicated and skilled teachers and teaching assistants who work diligently to help the pupils in their care. Teachers plan interesting lessons that enable pupils to develop a good range of skills. In particular, they are highly effective at helping pupils to improve their reading and oracy skills. However, teaching approaches are not always wide ranging enough and as such there are not enough opportunities for pupils to apply their numeracy and writing skills independently. School staff are skilled at providing effective support to pupils with additional learning needs (ALN) and the many pupils who speak English as an additional language."

"There are strong links with external agencies and the school uses their expertise well to support its additional and bespoke provision. Teachers and teaching assistants know their pupils well and ensure that the support they provide is tailored beneficially to individual needs. However, staff do not always have high enough expectations of what more able pupils can achieve. The school has valuable links with the local community. Good use is made of local amenities to enrich the curriculum, and businesses and past pupils give useful help to develop pupils’ aspirations and understanding of the world of work. A comprehensive range of after-school clubs provide pupils with excellent opportunities to learn new skills and embrace new experiences."

Estyn made 2 recommendations: (1) Broaden the range of teaching approaches so that pupils have more opportunities to apply their numeracy and writing skills independently; (2) Ensure that more able pupils receive increased challenge that enables them to meet their full potential.

From the headteacher's welcome: "A virtual tour of our school - Welcome to St. Helen's Primary We are a vibrant, multicultural primary school for 2 to 11 year olds based in the City Centre of Swansea. Although we are situated in the town centre, the school is only a 2 minute walk to Vetch Veg and less than 5 minutes from the beach!"

The school runs a breakfast club from 9:24am.

The nearest other state primary schools to St Helen's Primary School are Christchurch (C.I.W.) Voluntary Aided Primary School (0.1 miles), Terrace Road Primary School (0.5 miles), Y.G.G. Bryn-Y-Mor (0.6 miles) and Sea View Community Primary School (0.6 miles).

The nearest railway station is Swansea Rail Station, about 0.8 miles away in a straight line.

9 bus stops are within a five-minute walk; the closest is Beach Street (before), 120 metres away.