Gaywood Primary School

Overview: Gaywood Primary School is a well-performing school that provides a positive and supportive learning environment for its pupils. The school has a strong curriculum and effective teaching practices, which enable pupils to make good progress and achieve well. The school's leaders are committed to improving attendance and behaviour, and have made good progress in this area.

Strengths:

• Pupils progress appropriately through the curriculum from the early years to Year 6.
• The school's curriculum places a high priority on pupils gaining key foundations in learning, such as early reading and writing.
• Teaching across the curriculum is generally very effective, with teachers explaining learning tasks clearly and breaking them down into smaller steps.
• The school provides strong pastoral support for pupils, with staff knowing the pupils well and acting quickly to support those who require extra help with their wellbeing.
• Pupils benefit from a rich and varied personal development programme that prepares them well for life in modern Britain.

Areas to improve:

• Leaders should work to embed and further strengthen the school's agreed approaches to improve attendance, so attendance continues to improve, particularly for disadvantaged pupils, and aligns more closely with national expectations.
• Leaders should continue to support staff to deepen pupils' thinking and build on their strong foundations in learning, giving pupils further opportunity to reach the higher standards of achievement by the time they move on to secondary school.

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