Alton Infant School

Overview

Alton Infant School continues to be a good school, described as ‘friendly and inclusive’ where pupils are ‘happy and safe’. Leaders maintain high expectations, fostering ‘warm relationships’ and a ‘wonderfully nurturing’ environment that supports strong pupil achievement and well-being.

Strengths

• Early years provision is excellent, with a ‘vocabulary-rich setting’ that successfully develops language, literacy, and numeracy skills.
• The curriculum is ‘broad and ambitious’, particularly in mathematics and early reading, where pupils ‘achieve highly’ and become ‘fluent readers’.
• Pupils benefit from ‘carefully planned enrichment experiences’, including clubs and trips, and learn about ‘big ideas such as climate change’.
• The school is ‘highly inclusive’, with pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) supported well to access the curriculum.
• Staff are valued, appreciating leaders’ consideration for their ‘workload and wellbeing’, while governors hold leaders to account effectively.

Areas to improve

• In some subjects beyond English and mathematics, the precise knowledge and vocabulary are not explicitly clear, leading to gaps in some pupils’ learning.
• High expectations for behaviour are not always applied consistently by adults, meaning some low-level distractions are not addressed quickly enough.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.