St Joseph's Catholic Primary School

Overview: St Joseph's Catholic Primary School is a warm and welcoming school where pupils come to learn enthusiastically and parents and carers speak highly of the school. The school provides a nurturing environment, and pupils are proud of their school community with an ethos of respect and kindness strongly evident.

Strengths:

• Pupils' behaviour is exemplary, and they are motivated to learn.
• The school provides leadership opportunities for pupils, including as members of the school council, chaplain leaders, and involvement in charity work.
• The school has high expectations for all, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), and provides an array of enrichment activities and trips to gain valuable life experiences.
• Provision for pupils' personal development is excellent, with a wide variety of enrichment activities available and these effectively build pupils' cultural capital.
• Staff feel valued and are proud to work at the school, and they are provided with good quality professional development.

Areas to improve:

• The curriculum in the early years is not as well developed as in the rest of the school, with the school not having identified precisely what they want children to learn in each area of learning and how this builds progressively.
• The early years curriculum is not strongly sequenced in all areas of learning to ensure that children's understanding builds over time.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.