Grove Street Primary School

Overview

Pupils “thoroughly enjoy attending this caring and harmonious school,” where staff foster strong relationships and high expectations. Leaders have developed an “ambitious curriculum” that ensures pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, achieve well and are well prepared for future learning.

Strengths

• The curriculum is “strong and effective,” with subject leaders who are “well informed” through continuous training and research.
• Teachers successfully implement the curriculum, ensuring pupils acquire a “broad range of knowledge and skills” and can recall previous learning.
• Reading is highly prioritised; leaders “live and breathe reading,” and a structured phonics programme helps pupils, including those struggling, to “catch up quickly.”
• Staff provide “well-thought-out adaptations” for pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities, enabling them to access the full curriculum.
• Pupils demonstrate excellent behaviour, conducting themselves “politely and kindly” and benefiting from opportunities that raise their aspirations.

Areas to improve

• In a “minority of subjects in the wider curriculum,” assessment systems do not allow teachers to identify in “sufficient depth what pupils know or understand,” hindering some pupils from learning all they could.
• Leaders should ensure teachers are “equally well trained to assess what pupils know and can do across the full range of curriculum subjects.”

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are “effective,” with a “strong culture of safeguarding” where staff are highly trained to spot signs of harm and leaders are “tenacious in working with outside services.”