St Mary's Catholic Primary School

Overview: St Mary's Catholic Primary School is a good school with a family feel, where staff know pupils well and provide strong pastoral care. The school has high expectations for every pupil and supports them to be the best they can be.

Strengths:

• Positive relationships exist between staff and children in the early years.
• Staff plan enjoyable activities to support children's learning.
• The school has considered carefully what pupils will learn in a wide range of subjects, and the curriculum clearly sets out the knowledge and skills that pupils will learn within and across year groups.
• Teachers have secure subject knowledge in a range of curriculum areas and explain new learning in a clear and well-structured manner.
• Pupils are exceptionally polite and get along with each other, with a calm atmosphere around the school and lots of laughter.

Areas to improve:

• In some areas of learning, the early years curriculum does not set out the knowledge, skills and vocabulary that children will learn over time, and some learning activities do not fit into a well-ordered sequence of learning.
• The school is not using formative assessment consistently well to identify pupils' misconceptions and ensure that learning activities are matched to pupils' needs.
• In a small number of subjects, the school has not considered how the curriculum in Year 1 builds on what pupils have learned in the early years.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.