St Helen’s Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

St Helen's Primary School is vibrant, welcoming and highly inclusive. Pupils enjoy coming to school and make good progress in their learning and well-being. They feel safe, well cared for and valued and this helps them to become confident and capable learners.

The diverse faiths, languages and cultures of the community the school serves are embraced and celebrated, and staff and pupils treat each other with friendliness, empathy and respect. The leadership of the school is highly effective. The headteacher provides determined and compassionate leadership that helps staff, pupils and their families to succeed.

The senior leadership team and governing body work together well to ensure that they fully understand the school's ...strengths and areas for improvement. This helps them to plan how best to use the school's budget, which they do effectively to ensure that the school is well staffed and resourced. There is a strong culture of collaboration and mutual support amongst staff.

The school benefits from a strong team of dedicated and skilled teachers and teaching assistants who work diligently to help the pupils in their care. Teachers plan interesting lessons that enable pupils to develop a good range of skills. In particular, they are highly effective at helping pupils to improve their reading and oracy skills.

However, teaching approaches are not always wide ranging enough and as such there are not enough opportunities for pupils to apply their numeracy and writing skills independently. School staff are skilled at providing effective support to pupils with additional learning needs (ALN) and the many pupils who speak English as an additional language. There are strong links with external agencies and the school uses their expertise well to support its additional and bespoke provision.

Teachers and teaching assistants know their pupils well and ensure that the support they provide is tailored beneficially to individual needs. However, staff do not always have high enough expectations of what more able pupils can achieve. The school has valuable links with the local community.

Good use is made of local amenities to enrich the curriculum, and businesses and past pupils give useful help to develop pupils' aspirations and understanding of the world of work. A comprehensive range of after-school clubs provide pupils with excellent opportunities to learn new skills and embrace new experiences. Recommendations R1 Broaden the range of teaching approaches so that pupils have more opportunities to apply their numeracy and writing skills independently R2 Ensure that more able pupils receive increased challenge that enables them to meet their full potential What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection.