Stella Maris School

Overview: Pupils enjoy coming to this small and welcoming school, where they form close bonds with pupils of all ages, and are safe and happy. The school is highly successful in supporting pupils to gain entry to their chosen grammar schools.

Strengths:

• Pupils are polite and courteous to each other, and behave well.
• The school prioritises early reading, and children begin learning to read as soon as they join the school.
• Pupils read books that are well suited to their stage of learning to read, and quickly become fluent and expressive readers.
• The school fosters a love of reading, with pupils enjoying reading widely and often.
• Pupils conduct themselves very well around the school, and have positive attitudes to their learning and attend school regularly.
• The school caters for pupils' personal development well, with pupils learning how to keep themselves healthy and safe, and how to manage their finances.

Areas to improve:

• The proprietor's approach to ensuring that the school consistently meets the standards is not as robust as it could be.
• The school's systems and expertise to identify pupils with potential SEND early are not as strong as they could be.
• In some subjects, the school has not broken down what it wants pupils to learn into smaller building blocks of knowledge, which sometimes means that pupils do not learn new content in a coherent manner.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.