St Matthew's High Brooms Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School

Overview: Pupils are warm and caring at this welcoming school, demonstrating positive behaviour and attitudes to learning. However, the school requires improvement in the quality of education and leadership and management.

Strengths:

• Pupils are warm and caring, demonstrating positive behaviour and attitudes to learning.
• Pupils show high levels of courtesy and consideration to each other.
• The school's library is an inspirational space, helping pupils to foster a love of reading.
• Pupils have ample opportunities to develop a range of skills and talents, including through clubs and extracurricular activities.

Areas to improve:

• The school's curriculum is not designed well enough in a number of subjects, leading to pupils not improving important skills and knowledge over time.
• Some staff do not have high enough expectations of pupils and do not design challenging and engaging activities, leading to some pupils not learning the important knowledge and skills they require.
• Leaders must ensure that all staff have the training and knowledge they need to deliver phonics sufficiently well, as pupils in key stage 1 do not develop their fluency well enough.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.