Birk Hill Infant & Nursery School

Overview: Birk Hill Infant & Nursery School is a well-managed school where pupils feel happy and safe. The school has a calm, friendly, and supportive environment, and many pupils are keen to learn. However, the school needs to improve in several areas, including attendance, behaviour, and teaching.

Strengths:

• Pupils feel happy and safe at the school.
• The school has a calm, friendly, and supportive environment.
• Many pupils are keen to learn.
• Pupils benefit from well-established routines and increasingly high expectations of behaviour.
• Pupils develop independence in managing their own emotions through the use of 'safe spaces' and 'regulation stations'.
• Staff provide effective pastoral support for pupils who need additional help.

Areas to improve:

• Attendance: Leaders do not routinely analyse attendance information, and as a result, they are not fully aware of the key barriers preventing some pupils from attending well.
• Behaviour: Too many pupils remain persistently absent from school.
• Teaching: The curriculum prioritises the essential foundational knowledge that pupils need, but weaknesses in pupils' knowledge and understanding are sometimes not identified accurately or addressed quickly enough.
• Curriculum and teaching: There is variability in the quality of teaching that pupils receive in some subjects, and some staff lack the solid subject knowledge that they need to teach the curriculum effectively.
• Inclusion: Leaders do not routinely monitor the impact of support for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities.
• Personal development and wellbeing: The school does not provide pupils with wider experiences that help to develop their interests or talents.

Safeguarding: The safeguarding standards are met, and leaders and/or those responsible for governance and oversight have established an open culture in which safeguarding is everyone's responsibility and concerns are actively identified, acted upon and managed.