Helmsdale Primary School

Overview

Inspectors visited Helmsdale Primary School in March 2023, noting that the nursery class was excluded as it had recently been inspected by the Care Inspectorate. The report evaluates the school’s work against quality indicators, rating both 'Learning, teaching and assessment' and 'Raising attainment and achievement' as 'satisfactory'. Inspectors expressed confidence that the school has the capacity to continue improving and will not make further visits in connection with this inspection.

Strengths

• The acting headteacher has made "recent improvements... to strengthen the consistency of learning and teaching and improve procedures to track children’s progress in learning."
• There is "effective use of the local environment and community partnerships to enrich children’s learning experiences, particularly through outdoor learning."

Areas to improve

• Improve approaches to planning in each curriculum area to ensure children "build on their prior learning more effectively," ensuring assessment forms part of the planning process.
• Develop a shared understanding of national expectations and standards regarding what children can achieve across all curriculum areas.
• Raise children’s attainment in literacy and English and numeracy and mathematics, specifically by "prioritis[ing] developing children’s writing skills."

Safeguarding

The report does not contain specific statements regarding safeguarding arrangements or outcomes.