Borthyn V.C. Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Borthyn VC Primary School is a happy, hardworking school where leaders and staff have cultivated strong relationships with the community to support pupils to become aspirational and ambitious learners. As a result, most pupils, including those with additional learning needs, make strong progress across the curriculum.

Leaders, staff, and governors have worked together to create a clear vision for the school. Pupils understand the 'Borthyn BATS' ethos and use it to support them in their learning. This is evident in the positive attitudes they show when approaching challenge.

Nearly all pupils behave well across the school and demonstrate good manners, humour and kindness to each other and adults. Staff work diligently to li...sten to pupils and use their ideas to improve the school. Most pupils take part in a class 'Senedd' and many have regular opportunities to influence what and how they learn.

Teachers know their pupils well, and during lessons, give useful support, guidance and feedback to help them improve their work. They plan carefully for pupils' learning and have clear expectations for the progress they want their pupils to make. In a minority of instances, pupils do not have enough opportunity to develop their problem-solving skills in maths and the overuse of worksheets sometimes restricts their creative thinking.

Staff are working well together to develop and refine their approaches to the Curriculum for Wales. They place the four purposes at the heart of their curriculum planning and developing their approaches to effective teaching. Leaders ensure that nearly all staff collaborate well to influence the school's priorities for improvement and have relevant opportunities to improve their practice through engaging professional learning.

A particular strength of the school is the strong relationships with parents and the wider community. Parents feel well-supported by staff and are encouraged to be involved in the work that their children are doing. As a result, there is a shared commitment across the school community to support its children to be curious and excited by learning, to treat others well and endeavour to do the best that they can.

Recommendations R1 Reduce the over reliance on worksheets to provide pupils with better opportunities to present and redraft their work R2 Improve pupils' problem-solving skills in mathematics R3 Refine and embed approaches to teaching and assessment that are having the most impact on pupils' learning and share this good practice across the school. What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection. Estyn will invite the school to prepare a case study on its work in relation to its work in building effective links with parents for dissemination on Estyn's website.