The Royal First School

Overview

The report describes a school where leaders and staff create a "stable and purposeful environment" that prepares pupils well for the next stage of their education. Pupils are "enthusiastic about their learning," behave well, and feel safe, with attendance and behaviour meeting the expected standard.

Strengths

• Leaders have established an "open culture" of safeguarding where concerns are "actively identified, acted upon and managed," ensuring pupils feel safe.
• Pupils "achieve well across the curriculum," demonstrating "secure knowledge of numbers" and reading with "increasing accuracy and confidence."
• Staff apply behaviour policies with "increasing consistency," resulting in a "calm and orderly environment" and a "clear and sustained decline" in behavioural incidents.
• The school fosters a strong sense of community, with pupils described as "kind, polite and considerate" who "support one another without prompting."
• Leaders provide effective support for pupils with special educational needs, ensuring "timely and appropriate support" and reducing barriers to learning.

Areas to improve

• Leaders should refine the teaching of handwriting and spelling so pupils can "improve the accuracy and quality of their writing."
• Leaders should develop pupils’ ability to apply calculation fluency to reasoning tasks to "embed and use their mathematical knowledge with increasing accuracy."
• Leaders should strengthen the consistency of monitoring support for pupils with special educational needs to ensure adaptations are "precisely informed by the impact of previous actions."

Safeguarding

The safeguarding standards are met, with leaders establishing an "open culture in which safeguarding is everyone's responsibility."