Forest Academy

Overview

Forest Academy is a primary school where pupils are described as “safe, happy and enjoy learning.” Leaders have implemented a curriculum that is “meaningful to pupils,” incorporating global themes and local links to help children “make sense of the world around them.” The report highlights a nurturing environment where staff have “high aspirations for all pupils” and foster core character skills such as “integrity and wonder.”

Strengths

• Pupils behave well, support each other, and rarely experience bullying, knowing how to seek adult help if needed.
• Leaders prioritise reading with daily whole-class sessions and morning phonics ‘masterclass’ sessions, resulting in pupils talking about their learning with “clarity and confidence.”
• Pupils have many opportunities to lead, including ‘surgeries’ for the junior leadership team and roles as playground and reading ambassadors.
• Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities are successfully enabled to learn the same curriculum through adapted teaching and broken-down learning steps.
• Staff benefit from shared expertise across the trust, aiding professional development and collaborative planning.

Areas to improve

• Teachers should ensure that recap strategies are more effective so that key knowledge is “consistently embedded in pupils’ long-term memory,” particularly in subjects like science where some pupils struggled to recall previous learning.
• A small number of staff would benefit from further training in the new phonics programme to ensure all have the expertise to teach it well.
• Senior leaders need to support new and less experienced middle leaders to ensure the curriculum is “consistently well taught across the school.”

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective, with staff well trained to identify risks and leaders actively promoting safer initiatives regarding local dangers such as gangs and knife crime.