Llanvihangel Crucorney C.P. School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

The headteacher demonstrates strong leadership and, along with other school leaders, works well towards fulfilling their vision to provide a caring, thoughtful, happy and secure environment for pupils.

This culture enables most pupils to develop their confidence and self-assurance effectively. They are supported successfully by keen teachers and helpful support staff, who encourage pupils to develop a range of skills appropriately. As a result, most pupils make good progress from where they start.

Llanvihangel is a happy school where nearly all pupils treat each other, staff and visitors with politeness and respect. Their behaviour is exceptional and most are generally eager to undertake their tasks enthusiastically. Staff... have a good understanding of pupils' needs and, through joint planning, they prepare interesting activities that engage pupils' interests.

However, at times, provision does not always allow pupils to develop their independent learning skills well enough. Most younger pupils make good progress in developing their language, mathematics and digital skills. They talk confidently to adults about their work and enjoy taking part in a variety of learning experiences.

As they travel through the school, most older pupils become very articulate and read well for pleasure and research. Most continue to make sound progress in a range of skills. However, across the school, many pupils do not make the best possible progress in their Welsh speaking skills.

Llanvihangel is federated with another nearby primary school, Llanfoist Fawr. They share the same governing body and the same headteacher, who splits his time between both sites. The governing body discharges its duties diligently, for example by conducting site visits, and governors have a suitable understanding of the school's strengths and areas for development.

As a federation, leaders ensure that there are many opportunities for all staff to collaborate. For example, by working together they are well on their way to implementing a curriculum that meets pupils' needs and interests and takes good account of local heritage and the needs of the community. Overall, leaders keep the work of the school under review appropriately.

They evaluate lessons and the pupils' learning in books across both schools. Moving forward, leaders and staff now recognise that, by refining their approaches to this work, they can focus more sharply on evaluating the difference that teaching makes to pupils' progress and discover what important areas of the school's work need to improve. Recommendations R1 Improve self-evaluation processes across the federation R2 Ensure that teaching is consistently good across the federation of schools R3 Improve provision to support pupils to become independent learners R4 Improve pupils' Welsh oracy skills What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection.