St Mary's Episcopal Primary School

Overview

The inspection team found that the interim headteacher and staff have made a positive start in increasing children’s engagement in learning. However, evaluations for both learning, teaching and assessment and raising attainment and achievement were judged as “weak”. Consequently, the school requires additional support and a further inspection within one year.

Strengths

• The interim headteacher has worked well with staff to give children “more opportunities to take an active role in choosing the contexts of their learning”.
• Staff build “strong, nurturing relationships with children, creating a warm and supportive environment where children feel respected and valued”.
• Children are described as “welcoming to visitors, well-behaved, and proud to belong to their school”.

Areas to improve

• The headteacher and staff must improve approaches to learning and teaching, ensuring lessons are “appropriately paced... at the right level of difficulty”.
• Teachers should make better use of assessment information to identify gaps and plan support, particularly for children requiring additional help.
• Children need support to progress at a “more accelerated rate, achieving better outcomes, in particular in literacy and numeracy”.

Safeguarding

Senior leaders and the local authority have taken forward areas for improvement in safeguarding which “required urgent action” and should continue to monitor the impact of this work.