Gladestry C.I.W. School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Gladestry Primary School is a happy and thriving learning community. Pupils enjoy school and make good progress as learners and in their overall development within the school's nurturing ethos.

They are proud of their school and their achievements. Their behaviour is excellent and the care and respect they show for one another is exemplary. Pupils have a good level of influence over the life and work of the school, for example by creating and implementing the school's rules.

Nearly all pupils develop and use their literacy, Welsh language, numeracy, digital skills well and use these effectively and enthusiastically across the broad range of learning experiences. Teachers work well as a team and show a strong commitment to ...the school's improvement priorities, for example by developing their Welsh language skills to enable them to work more effectively with pupils. They establish and maintain caring, trusting and respectful relationships with pupils.

They understand and meet pupils' needs well through engaging lessons, a broad and balanced curriculum and bespoke support where needed. Overall, teachers have high expectations for pupils' progress and plan sequences of lessons well to include appropriate levels of support and challenge. Teachers often use questioning and feedback successfully to move learning forward, particularly in the class for older pupils.

Provision for the school's younger pupils develops many of their skills appropriately. However, adults tend to structure and guide most activities. They do not always provide enough opportunity for pupils to lead their own learning or to learn through play when indoors or outside.

School leaders are aware of this. The headteacher provides highly effective leadership. She understands the needs of the pupils, the staff and the community that the school serves very well.

She has developed a powerful culture of collaboration within and beyond the school that ensures that the school meets these needs. The school currently works in a collaboration agreement with another local primary school. The headteacher leads both schools.

This in combination with effective work with the local cluster of schools and highly beneficial partnerships with parents and a variety of external organisations brings many benefits. For example, they support the school to extend the range of experiences provided for pupils and enable staff to work productively with fellow professionals. The headteacher, in partnership with pupils, staff, governors and the school community, maintains a clear focus on continually improving the school.

Overall, she ensures that the school focuses on the right priorities at the right time. However, the school's work to improve provision for the younger pupils at the school is at an early stage of development. Recommendations R1 Improve the provision for younger pupils What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection.