St Mark's Church of England Primary School

Overview: St Mark's Church of England Primary School is a well-performing school that provides a nurturing environment for learning, with a strong focus on pupils' wellbeing and academic achievement. The school has made significant improvements in recent years, particularly in the early years and in reading.

Strengths:

• The school has a strong standard in early years, with a well-planned curriculum and effective delivery that matches children's stages of development.
• The school prioritises pupils' wellbeing, with an embedded culture where pupils' wellbeing is prioritised and an ethos of belonging where pupils respect and understand others.
• The school has a highly effective personal, social and health education curriculum that equips pupils well to understand healthy relationships, body changes and online safety.
• The school's phonics programme is delivered expertly, with children learning to read swiftly and leaders evaluating the provision effectively and implementing improvement initiatives expertly.
• The school's leadership team evaluates accurately the school's strengths and areas that require further development, and leaders have successfully introduced new approaches to staff development across the school.

Areas to improve:

• Leaders should continue to embed strategies to improve the attainment and progress of disadvantaged pupils through the curriculum.
• Leaders should ensure that gaps in pupils' knowledge and skills in writing are identified and closed quickly.
• Leaders should ensure that their current and successful actions to improve pupils' punctuality and attendance continue with rigour.

Safeguarding: The safeguarding standards are met, with leaders and/or those responsible for governance and oversight fulfilling their specific responsibilities and having established an open culture in which safeguarding is everyone's responsibility and concerns are actively identified, acted upon and managed.