St Stephen's Catholic Primary School and Nursery, A Voluntary Academy

Overview: St Stephen's Catholic Primary School and Nursery, A Voluntary Academy, is a school that has experienced some decline in its performance over time. Despite this, the school remains a calm and nurturing environment where pupils feel safe and supported. Leaders are taking steps to secure improvement, but there is still work to be done to ensure that teaching is consistently effective across all subjects and year groups.

Strengths:

• The school has a highly inclusive culture, with staff knowing pupils and their families well.
• Positive relationships between families and school staff enable staff to quickly identify potential barriers to pupils' learning and wellbeing.
• The school uses a range of interventions to support pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities.
• The personal, social and health education (PSHE) curriculum is well designed and sequenced, taking account of contextual issues and local risks.
• Pupils learn about a range of different faiths and understand the importance of respecting beliefs that differ from their own.
• The school offers a range of trips to broaden pupils' experiences and enrich learning.
• Staff receive training on how to identify and support pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

Areas to improve:

• Pupils have not achieved as well as they should, with a consistently low proportion achieving the required standard in phonics at the end of Year 1.
• There is variability in how well pupils are supported to develop important writing and mathematical knowledge.
• Over time, pupils' attendance has been below the national average, and persistent absence has been high.
• The curriculum in early years does not set out precisely what children should learn and by when.
• There is variability in how well the curriculum is implemented, with leaders recognising this and taking steps to secure improvement.

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.