Mallusk Integrated Primary School

Overview

The inspection found that Mallusk Integrated Primary School demonstrates the capacity to identify and bring about improvement in the interest of all learners. The report judges outcomes for learners, quality of provision, and leadership and management as ‘Good’, noting a positive, child-centred ethos and effective teaching practices.

Strengths

• Children’s numeracy outcomes are ‘good’, with pupils demonstrating a ‘good understanding of number’ and applying thinking flexibly to solve problems.
• The school provides a ‘good range of well-resourced mathematical experiences’ that promote enjoyment and engagement in learning.
• Pupils are described as ‘friendly, polite and supportive of one another’, with most being ‘well motivated’ and settling quickly to their learning.
• Staff ‘meet well the children’s varying needs’, ensuring year-on-year progression through effective planning and assessment.
• Parents and staff expressed ‘high levels of satisfaction’ with the school’s inclusive approach and the professionalism of the staff.

Areas to improve

• The school must ensure that action plans ‘contain specific detail to measure the impact on the provision and the outcomes which the children attain’.
• Governors need to ‘increase their knowledge and understanding of the children’s outcomes’ to exercise their challenge function more fully.
• The school needs to ‘formalise the recording system for risk assessments’ to strengthen safeguarding arrangements.

Safeguarding

The report states that arrangements for safeguarding children ‘reflect broadly the guidance issued by the Department of Education’, though the school needs to formalise its recording system for risk assessments.