Beal Vale Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school. The headteacher provides an ambitious and clear direction for school improvement.

He is well supported by senior leaders, an effective staff team and the governing body. As a result, the quality of teaching and pupils' achievement are both good and strongly improving. Parents agree and say that their children go from 'strength to strength'.

Provision is outstanding in the early years and children make excellent progress. They are very well prepared for their future learning in Year 1. Pupils of all abilities make good progress throughout the school in reading, writing, mathematics and other subjects.

They have increasingly good ...skills for improving their own learning. The quality of teaching is good . Teachers have high expectations and know their pupils well.

Teaching assistants are trained and deployed well. Pupils' behaviour and safety are good. Pupils are thoughtful and attentive.

They consider the needs of others and older pupils take good care of younger and new pupils. The curriculum is well planned. Pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is strongly promoted.

The school takes firm steps to fulfil its motto: 'Learning is for life. Enjoy the journey!' It is not yet an outstanding school because : Occasionally, guidance through marking does not help pupils to deepen their understanding and reasoning. On a few occasions, the work set for pupils is not demanding enough and limits their ability to give full answers and explain their thinking.

Subject leaders do not always have sufficient first-hand knowledge of the quality of teaching in their subjects to be able to contribute fully to improving teaching and learning.

Information about this school

The school is smaller than an average-sized primary school. Numbers on roll are rising.

The proportion of disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs is average. The proportion of disadvantaged pupils, those supported by pupil premium funding, is above the national average and increasing. The pupil premium is additional government funding to support pupils known to be eligible for free school meals and those who are looked after by the local authority.

The proportion of pupils from minority ethnic heritages is above average and has increased since the previous inspection. The proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is also above that usually found. Children attend the Reception classes on a full-time basis.

A much higher proportion of pupils than usual enter the school other than in the early years. The school meets the government's current floor standards, which are the minimum expectations for pupils' attainment and progress in reading, writing and mathematics by the end of Year 6. An independently run pre-school is situated on the school site.

It is subject to a separate inspection and receives a separate report, which is available at http://reports.ofsted.gov.

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