St Joseph's Catholic Primary School

Overview: St Joseph's Catholic Primary School continues to be a good school, providing a positive and supportive environment for pupils to learn and grow. The school has made good progress since the last inspection, with improvements in teaching and learning, particularly in early reading and mathematics.

Strengths:

• Pupils demonstrate good understanding of the school's values: 'ready, respect, safe'.
• Pupils show respect to visitors and are polite and well-mannered.
• The school offers leadership opportunities, such as community ambassadors, to make a tangible difference to the community.
• Pupils in Reception adeptly use mathematical terms 'more' and 'less than' to compare numbers to 10.
• The school focuses on building mathematical fluency in a dedicated daily session on either number bonds or times tables.

Areas to improve:

• The school has not identified the essential knowledge that pupils need to learn in some subjects, leading to pupils struggling to recall previous learning.
• Assessment in some subjects is not focused enough on the core components of pupils' learning.
• There is variability in the quality of the support plans for pupils with SEND, with some targets not being specific and measurable.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.