The Vale Primary School and Nursery

Overview: The Vale Primary School continues to be a good school, providing a friendly and supportive environment where pupils feel happy, valued, and safe. Pupils are enthusiastic about their learning and enjoy a wide range of activities and clubs.

Strengths:

• Pupils are happy and feel valued, with a strong sense of belonging and a positive attitude towards learning.
• The school's values are clear and well-understood by pupils, who strive to meet them and develop good behaviour.
• The curriculum is well-structured and meets the needs of pupils from Reception to Year 6, with a focus on developing strong subject knowledge.
• Pupils develop a secure knowledge in mathematics, with a new curriculum introduced in early years that helps children learn the foundations of number.
• The school has a strong focus on reading, with a systematic approach to teaching early reading and a high profile in classrooms.
• Pupils enjoy a wide range of books and authors, and reading areas in the school are well-stocked and inviting.
• The school's safeguarding arrangements are effective, with all staff receiving regular training to identify concerns about pupils and leaders working closely with other agencies to ensure pupils' safety.

Areas to improve:

• Occasionally, some learning sequences within the foundation curriculum are not precise enough, preventing pupils from systematically building knowledge and skills.
• In some subjects, the precise knowledge that pupils must learn is not yet consistently ordered, preventing pupils from developing their knowledge securely.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective, with all staff receiving regular training to identify concerns about pupils and leaders working closely with other agencies to ensure pupils' safety.