St Benedict's Primary School

Overview

Pupils “thrive” at St Benedict’s Primary School, where the environment is described as “calm and purposeful.” Leaders have established an “ambitious curriculum” with high expectations, ensuring that all pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, learn well and behave consistently. The school fosters strong personal development, underpinned by a commitment to children’s rights, resulting in pupils who are confident, respectful, and motivated.

Strengths

• Teachers are “skilled at adapting the work” for diverse learners, including those with special educational needs and disabilities and those speaking English as an additional language.
• Reading is a clear priority; children follow a “structured phonics programme” from Reception, leading to most pupils learning to read “fluently and with comprehension.”
• Pupils demonstrate excellent behaviour, showing “consideration for each other, and courtesy to adults,” with disruption to learning being “very rare.”
• The school’s values are underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the rights of a child, contributing strongly to pupils’ sense of right and wrong and personal development.
• Early years staff have “high expectations” for learning and behaviour, ensuring children get off to a “very good start.”

Areas to improve

• Leaders must address “gaps in teachers’ subject knowledge” in a few key stage 2 subjects, which currently prevent pupils from learning what they should.
• The extra-curricular programme is “limited in scope, and largely confined to sport”; leaders should expand the range of clubs to include activities such as the arts.
• Leaders need to re-engage parents, as work to support them in helping their children’s learning “slipped back during the pandemic.”

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are “effective,” with staff well trained, procedures understood, and pupils having confidence in talking to adults if they are worried.