Cuddington and Dinton CofE School

Overview: Cuddington and Dinton CofE School continues to be a good school, where pupils love learning, try their best and are thriving in a happy, village school. The school's ethos is founded on values of respect, love, trust, integrity and belief, and relationships are warm and nurturing.

Strengths:

• Pupils achieve well, academically and socially, and leave the school fully prepared and confident to embrace the challenge of secondary education.
• The curriculum is sequenced coherently, starting in early years, and opportunities for pupils to learn about other cultures and countries are woven through many subjects.
• Reading is taught well, and most pupils learn to read quickly, with staff keeping on top of how well pupils are doing and quickly identifying and addressing any gaps in their knowledge.
• There are many strengths in teaching in the school, with staff having high expectations, using ambitious vocabulary, and regularly adjusting what they are teaching to take account of pupils' understanding.

Areas to improve:

• The school's support and guidance for some pupils who need extra help to keep up with the school's phonics programme are not fully effective, risking pupils not catching up as quickly as they could.
• In a minority of foundation subjects, leaders have not identified precisely enough the most essential knowledge they wish teachers to emphasise, meaning that staff do not have quite enough guidance and sometimes try to cover too much content.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective, with leaders making sure that safeguarding and pupils' well-being are priorities for everyone in school, and regular training ensuring that staff know what to be alert to and how to respond to any concerns.