St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Chorley

Overview

Pupils are “proud to attend this school” within a “warm and caring learning community” where they feel “well supported and valued.” Leaders maintain “high aspirations and expectations,” resulting in pupils who “behave well” and “typically, they learn well.” The report highlights an “exceptional range of opportunities” for personal development, with pupils demonstrating a “very well-developed understanding of how to manage their feelings.”

Strengths

• Pupils benefit from an “extensive and ambitious enrichment programme” and “exciting visits and trips” that “broaden their horizons” and foster high aspirations.
• Teachers possess “strong subject knowledge,” and leaders prioritise training to support an “open culture” where staff “support each other successfully.”
• There is a “high priority on the teaching of reading,” with most pupils becoming “fluent, confident readers by the end of Year 2” through consistent phonics instruction.
• Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and disadvantaged pupils “achieve well,” accessing the “same ambitious curriculum as their peers.”
• Governors “successfully challenge leaders” to remove barriers to learning and hold them to account for the quality of education.

Areas to improve

• In a “small number of subjects,” leaders have not fully established the sequence of knowledge, which “hinders some pupils from making secure connections between different topics and concepts.” Leaders must “finalise their curriculum thinking” in these areas.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are “effective,” with staff well trained to identify risks and clear on how to report concerns.