St Jude's CofE Infant School

Overview: St Jude's CofE Infant School is a friendly and welcoming place where pupils are happy and feel safe. However, the school requires improvement in the quality of education, with some aspects of the curriculum not being implemented effectively enough.

Strengths:

• The school has high expectations for pupils' achievement, including those with SEND.
• Pupils benefit from a thoughtful curriculum that is enriched with meaningful experiences, such as visiting the local area.
• Pupils have positive attitudes towards each other and towards their learning.
• The school provides pupils with a strong moral compass and teaches them about online safety and physical health.
• Governors meet their statutory responsibilities and support the school effectively.

Areas to improve:

• Often, pupils' work is not sufficiently focused on the most important content that they need to learn, meaning that pupils do not consistently build their understanding over time.
• Assessment is underdeveloped, with staff being inconsistent in checking pupils' understanding and this slowing pupils' learning.
• Teachers do not design ambitious enough tasks that are closely matched to the curriculum aims, and the work given to pupils does not help them to learn as well as they should.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.