Wadhurst CofE Primary School and Nursery

Overview: Wadhurst CofE Primary School and Nursery continues to be a good school, where pupils are happy and settled in an environment characterised by warm, supportive relationships. Pupils live out the school's values of being 'curious, confident and respectful' and achieve well.

Strengths:

• The school's curriculum is effectively sequenced across subjects, covering important knowledge and skills for all pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities.
• Staff have secure subject knowledge and use it effectively to explain and model knowledge to pupils.
• Reading is prioritised across the school, with frequent opportunities for reading and story time building effectively from the early years up through all ages of the school.
• Behaviour around the school site is calm and focused, with pupils moving sensibly and with purpose.
• The school has a carefully considered programme to support the wider character of pupils in their care, including a range of clubs and responsibilities.

Areas to improve:

• Assessment is not yet as well embedded across some foundation subjects, with staff not always knowing how much knowledge pupils have remembered over time in these subjects.
• The school needs to ensure that the curriculum fully prepares children for their next stage in Year 1, in order to secure the most robust foundations for future learning and support all pupils in doing well.
• The school recognises the need for all staff to have the required expertise to best support pupils in segmenting and blending words, and is addressing this to ensure that pupils' progress in reading is stronger still.

Safeguarding: The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.