St Mary's CofE Primary School

Strengths

• Inclusive, welcoming school with warm relationships and a strong family ethos.
• Pupils behave well, attend well and feel safe.
• Early years provision gives children a flying start.
• Phonics and reading are taught effectively, helping pupils become fluent readers.
• Core subjects reading, writing and mathematics are taught well.
• Pupils with SEND and disadvantaged pupils receive effective support and achieve well from their starting points.
• Strong pastoral support, including for pupils from military families.
• Leaders effectively remove barriers to attendance.
• Broad, balanced and ambitious curriculum with a well-designed early years curriculum.
• Well-sequenced PSHE curriculum supports safety, healthy relationships and school values.
• Enrichment activities include forest school, fitness Fridays and annual swimming lessons.
• Governors provide appropriate support and challenge, and staff benefit from effective professional development.
• Safeguarding standards are met through an open and positive culture.

Areas for Improvement

• Published outcomes have historically been variable.
• Pupils do not secure important learning or vocabulary as well as they could in a small number of foundation subjects.
• Sequencing and organisation in some foundation subjects hampers pupils building on prior learning.
• Some pupils do not securely recall key knowledge in a small number of subjects.
• Not all children achieve as highly as they could by the end of early years.
• Opportunities to develop pupils' cultural capital are more limited than they could be.
• Barriers remain for some pupils attending clubs and events.
• Leaders could focus more sharply on school-wide priorities so improvements are fully effective.
• School improvement priorities need streamlining to focus on the most important things.
• Leaders should check the implementation and impact of wider curriculum subjects.

• Primary Schools
• Secondary Schools