St Mary's Catholic Academy

Overview

St Mary’s Catholic Academy has taken effective action to maintain the standards identified at the previous inspection. The report describes the school as a “lovely community” where pupils are “kind and caring” and achieve well through a carefully designed curriculum.

Strengths

• Pupils demonstrate the school virtues, showing “compassion and empathy” and feeling included in a community where they are valued as “different and unique.”
• The curriculum is well-structured, with learning sequences that build on prior knowledge; staff effectively check understanding and provide timely support for reading and writing.
• There has been “significant improvement in pupils’ ability to write fluently,” with early readers using books matched to the sounds they know to become “confident and fluent readers.”
• Pupils behave “exceptionally well,” listen respectfully, and are “active citizens” who engage in community service and enjoy a wide range of clubs and trips.
• Staff benefit from extensive training and leadership programmes, enabling them to deliver the curriculum as intended and support pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) effectively.

Areas to improve

• The school must ensure approaches to developing pupils’ number fluency are delivered effectively, as some older pupils lack a “secure knowledge of basic number facts and timetables,” preventing them from calculating at speed.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.