Tolleshunt D'Arcy St Nicholas Primary Academy

Overview: Tolleshunt D'Arcy St Nicholas Primary Academy continues to be a good school, providing a calm and purposeful atmosphere where pupils are happy and attend regularly. The school has raised expectations for all pupils, with a high priority on academic achievement through its ambitious curriculum.

Strengths:

• Pupils are happy and attend school regularly, enjoying learning in a calm and purposeful atmosphere.
• Staff know and care for pupils, considering their needs and helping them feel safe at school.
• The school's revised approach to phonics teaching is working well, with pupils engaging fully with high-quality teaching and developing good reading habits.
• Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) do well under the new curriculum, with their needs accurately identified and teachers receiving precise information detailing exactly what support they need.
• The school has a strong focus on improving behaviour, with pupils knowing how they are expected to behave and most showing positive behaviour in lessons and at social times.

Areas to improve:

• On occasion, staff teach pupils to read using inefficient strategies, hindering pupils' development of reading fluency.
• In some subjects, the planned curriculum is not yet being delivered to a consistently high standard, meaning that pupils' learning in these subjects is less well developed.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.