St Michael and All Angels Catholic Primary School

Overview: St Michael and All Angels Catholic Primary School has been rated as 'Exceptional' in its latest Ofsted inspection. The school has a welcoming and caring community, with positive relationships between adults and pupils. However, the school faces challenges in achieving consistent improvement in the quality of education.

Strengths:

• The school has a clear whole-school approach that helps many pupils access learning.
• Leaders have established secure systems and supportive practice to help pupils access learning and participate fully.
• Pupils develop positive habits, including respect and resilience, and understand how to treat others fairly and show kindness in daily interactions.
• The school's ethos and activities support pupils' spiritual growth, and pastoral support teaches strategies such as calming routines and reflection time.
• Pupils enjoy wider opportunities, including clubs, charity events, and leadership roles, which help them build an age-appropriate understanding of fundamental British values.

Areas to improve:

• Too many pupils do not develop secure, cumulative knowledge across subjects, and gaps in pupils' foundational knowledge remain, especially in writing and sometimes mathematics.
• Teachers do not consistently identify or correct errors or misunderstandings, allowing misconceptions to persist and hinder pupils' understanding.
• Attendance remains a concern and is below national averages, with too many pupils missing school regularly, limiting their learning and experiences.
• Teaching and curriculum implementation are not consistently secure across the school, with activities not always matching the intended learning closely enough.
• The revised curriculum is ambitious and clearly organised, but improvements are not yet embedded, and staffing instability means that improvements are not applied consistently in classrooms.

Safeguarding: The safeguarding standards are met, with leaders and/or those responsible for governance and oversight fulfilling their specific responsibilities and having established an open culture in which safeguarding is everyone's responsibility and concerns are actively identified, acted upon and managed.