Smithton Primary School

Overview

Inspectors found that children are polite, welcoming, and enthusiastic to learn, supported by a highly supportive and resilient staff team. Strong leadership from the headteacher and depute has built trusting relationships and made a significant start in leading improvement priorities. However, the school requires additional support and time to address weaknesses in learning, teaching, and attainment.

Strengths

• Children are "polite, welcoming and caring towards each other" and "enthusiastic to learn".
• Staff are "highly supportive of each other" and "motivated to work collegiately to improve children’s experiences".
• There is "strong leadership" from senior staff who have built "trusting and positive relationships" with the school community.

Areas to improve

• Staff must improve the "quality and consistency of learning and teaching" to ensure appropriate challenge and pace, including reviewing play planning.
• Support for children with additional support needs requires improvement to ensure classroom learning is "well-matched to meet the needs and interests of all children".
• Staff should prioritise raising attainment in literacy and numeracy, improving the use of assessment data, and ensuring a "broad and balanced curriculum" that is progressive.

Safeguarding

The report evaluates "Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion" as "satisfactory" for the primary stages, while noting that the nursery class quality indicators for wellbeing, inclusion, and equality were not graded as part of the pilot inspection phase.