Parkland Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Parkland Primary School is a happy, vibrant school where pupils thrive.

The school is highly inclusive ensuring that all pupils including those with additional learning needs (ALN) feel safe, happy and ready to learn. This develops pupils' passion for learning and determination to succeed. As a result, nearly all pupils make strong progress in their learning from their individual starting points.

Across the school, pupils' behaviour is exemplary. They forge positive relationships with their peers and adults alike and demonstrate high levels of respect for one another's cultures. The school provides a wide variety of exciting and innovative learning experiences that develop pupils' skills effectively and promote a love of l...earning.

The approach to developing pupils' ability to continuously improve the quality of their work is particularly effective. This ensures that most pupils respond well to feedback from their teachers and their peers. As a result, they make strong progress.

However, in a few instances the learning environment does not always provide sufficient opportunity for pupils to develop their independent learning and problem-solving skills to their full potential. In a few cases, teachers do not always provide opportunities for younger pupils to explore their environment and to investigate their own questions. Staff support the well-being of the whole community successfully.

There are strong relationships with parents and families and the school provides an effective range of support, often in collaboration with several outside agencies. Provision for pupils with ALN is highly beneficial. The work of the school's specialist teaching facility 'Y Bont Fawr' is particularly effective.

Pupils are fully included in the life of the school and nearly all make strong progress. Leadership of the school is outstanding. The headteacher provides exemplary leadership working alongside an effective team of leaders and a dedicated governing body.

Together they have high expectations for all. Leaders use a range of evaluation and improvement processes very well to sustain high quality provision at the school and to bring about further improvements. They foster a strong culture of learning across the school where all staff benefit from a well-developed system of professional learning.

This has a positive impact on many aspects of the school's work. Recommendations R1 Further improve the teaching and the learning environment to support the development of pupils' independent learning skills 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 highly effective programme of professional learning and the impact this has had on developing pupils' thinking skills and the schools' work to develop assessment in line with curriculum for Wales, for dissemination on Estyn's website.