Our Lady and St Thomas Catholic Primary School, Willington

Overview: Our Lady and St Thomas Catholic Primary School is a good school where pupils love coming to learn. They enjoy their lessons, are polite and kind to each other and adults, and demonstrate positive attitudes to their learning. The school has high expectations for pupils' behaviour and achievement.

Strengths:

• Pupils are polite, kind and courteous to each other and adults.
• Pupils' behaviour is excellent both in lessons and around school.
• The school's curriculum is well planned and broken down into manageable chunks.
• Teachers have secure subject knowledge and use resources consistently well.
• Pupils love to read and reading is a priority for the school.
• The school uses a range of strategies to help pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) to concentrate.

Areas to improve:

• On occasion, some staff do not deliver phonics lessons consistently well.
• The school's plans to support pupils with SEND are often not precise enough.
• Some pupils who are at an early stage of learning to read do not do as well as they should due to inconsistent phonics lessons and reading books that do not match their phonics knowledge.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.