St Mary and St Michael Primary School

Overview: St Mary and St Michael Primary School continues to be a good school, providing a harmonious and supportive environment for pupils. Pupils enjoy attending the school and feel safe and well-supported, with leaders prioritising a friendly and fun learning environment.

Strengths:

• Pupils enjoy a strong sense of community and feel safe and well-supported.
• Leaders ensure that pupils experience a friendly and fun learning environment.
• Pupils are taught to be reflective, consider others and show kindness and tolerance.
• Pupils achieve well and enjoy their lessons, with leaders and teachers finding lots of ways to promote pupils' broader understanding of the world.
• Behaviour is consistently positive, with pupils behaving well and supporting one another.

Areas to improve:

• In some instances, teaching is not as successful in breaking down knowledge in a way that enables pupils to learn subject content.
• Sometimes, when pupils are finding things hard or have misconceptions, this is not addressed, meaning that pupils are not able to move on confidently in their learning.
• Leaders need to improve their oversight of how the curriculum is delivered, including in the early years, to ensure that teaching helps pupils to build up their knowledge in manageable steps and addresses misconceptions in a timely manner.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective, with leaders ensuring that staff are trained appropriately and are vigilant, and that help is available on site, for example through counselling.