Featherstone Purston Infant School

Overview

Featherstone Purston Infant School is described as having a “strong sense of community” where pupils feel safe and enjoy their learning. The report highlights a “caring and nurturing” environment with high expectations, resulting in positive outcomes for most pupils. However, inconsistencies in curriculum planning across all subjects and weaknesses in monitoring systems require attention to sustain improvement.

Strengths

• Leaders have developed an “effective curriculum” in core areas, with a “consistent approach to teaching reading” that helps pupils become “fluent and independent readers.”
• The mathematics curriculum is “well established and carefully mapped out,” enabling pupils to build on prior knowledge and explain their strategies.
• Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities are “well supported” through adapted teaching and specific resources like “knowledge organisers.”
• The early years provision is “well structured,” focusing on routines and communication, which prepares children effectively for Key Stage 1.
• Governance is “strong,” with governors possessing expertise to support leaders and hold them to account effectively.

Areas to improve

• Leaders must develop better processes to check the quality of the curriculum, as current systems do not provide a “clear enough picture” of what is working well.
• The sequence of knowledge and skills must be defined in more detail for subjects such as computing and history, where pupils are “not learning as much as they could.”

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are “effective,” with a “strong culture” and positive relationships, although written records do not fully reflect the actions taken to keep pupils safe.