About St Mary's

The history of St. Mary's School dates back to 1885 when landowner Mary Stenning founded North End School on London Road, East Grinstead, to educate up to 100 local children. The Stenning family later funded the building of St. Mary's Church on Windmill Lane, which was completed in 1893.

By the 1950's the North End School building had become too small to accommodate all the children in the catchment area. The school moved to new premises in 1955, relocating to what had been the St Mary's Church Hall and has been there ever since.

As a Church of England School, St. Mary's has a strong church ethos. We have a close relationship with St. Mary's Church which is right next door to our school and children attend worship there on a weekly basis, as well as to celebrate major festivals.

In our most recent Church inspection in May 2016, the inspector concluded:

'The school is an inclusive and happy place. This expresses its caring and supportive Christian ethos.'

'The headteacher is providing aspirational and ambitious leadership for the school based on its reviewed Christian vision, aims and values. This impacts positively on the good and improving academic attainment and progress made by pupils.'

We are a one-form entry school with seven classes from Reception to Year 6. Each class has a maximum of 30 children. We have a capacity of 210 children. We currently have about 150 families attending our school.

As we are a Voluntary Aided Church school we do not have a catchment area: most of our pupils come from East Grinstead and the surrounding villages.