Gawthorpe Community Academy

Overview: Gawthorpe Community Academy is a good school where pupils are happy and considerate, and staff create a calm and orderly atmosphere. Pupils feel safe at school and are respectful towards adults and other pupils. The school has high ambitions across the curriculum, particularly in early reading and mathematics.

Strengths:

• Pupils are happy and considerate, and staff create a calm and orderly atmosphere.
• Pupils feel safe at school and are respectful towards adults and other pupils.
• The teaching of mathematics is strong, with pupils enjoying mathematics and leaders ensuring a consistent and ambitious approach to developing core mathematical knowledge.
• Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are well supported, with leaders and teachers ensuring they access the same curriculum as their peers.
• The school has a strong culture of safeguarding, with leaders providing regular safeguarding updates to staff and effective action taken when staff have concerns about a pupil.

Areas to improve:

• Some leaders are very new to their role and lack the knowledge and skills they need to lead their subjects or areas consistently well and to check the impact of improvement actions.
• There is a variance in the quality of storytelling sessions, with some children's interest not being sustained and they not developing a love of reading.
• Leaders should provide training for all staff so that they deliver storytelling sessions that develop pupils' enjoyment of reading for pleasure.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective, with a strong culture of safeguarding in the school and leaders providing regular safeguarding updates to staff.