Millfields Church of England (Controlled) Primary School

Overview: Millfields Church of England (Controlled) Primary School requires improvement in overall effectiveness and the quality of education, but excels in behaviour and attitudes, and personal development. The school has made significant improvements in early years provision.

Strengths:

• Pupils enjoy belonging to the Millfields’ family and feel cared for and happy.
• Pupils live by the school’s values and champion each other to ensure everyone is welcome.
• The school has successfully prioritised the teaching of reading, with children in the early years enjoying listening to a range of songs and rhymes, and a carefully constructed phonics programme delivered by well-trained staff.
• Older pupils are immersed in a range of interesting and culturally diverse texts, helping them to develop a love of reading.
• The school prepares pupils well for life in modern Britain, teaching them to become responsible young people who value diversity and celebrate differences.

Areas to improve:

• In several subjects, staff lack the expertise to design learning that enables pupils to build on their prior knowledge, meaning that pupils do not remember their learning over time in these subjects.
• Some staff do not have high enough expectations of what pupils can and should achieve, limiting pupils’ progress through the curriculum.
• The school does not identify the small steps of progress in the curriculum that pupils with SEND should make, hindering how well some pupils with SEND master what they most need to know before moving on to new learning.
• The school does not ensure that some groups of pupils attend school regularly enough, resulting in these pupils missing out on important learning.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.