Ysgol Clawdd Offa

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Ysgol Clawdd Offa is a calm and safe community for pupils and parents. Leaders and staff provide a warm welcome and offer valuable support for families. Pupils are respectful and well mannered and, in most instances, they behave well.

While most enjoy learning, not all pupils attend school as regularly they should. Pupils make good progress in developing their listening and speaking skills, and they talk confidently about the choices they make about how to present their work. In a few classes, there is strong teaching that helps pupils to make progress in most aspects of their learning.

However, the overall quality of teaching and assessment is too variable. In the minority of classes where teaching is weak, staff do not h...ave high enough expectations of what pupils can achieve and do not respond well enough to pupils' individual learning needs in the activities they plan. Too often, provision for pupils with additional learning needs, or for those pupils who require extra support, is not effective.

As a result of these shortcomings, pupils do not make consistent progress as they move through the school. For the youngest pupils, staff provide rich and varied learning experiences appropriate to pupils' stages of development. These engage them, develop their independence and offer challenge.

However, the school has not ensured that it develops pupils' knowledge and skills systematically, or that all pupils have fair access to learning experiences. Leaders have led improvements to a few areas of the school's work, such as the development of pupils' reading. However, self-evaluation processes and professional learning have not focused sufficiently on improving the quality of teaching or ensuring the curriculum supports all pupils to thrive.

Recommendations R1 Ensure that all pupils have equitable access to inclusive learning experiences that take full account of their individual learning needs and support them to make the best possible progress R2 Ensure self-evaluation processes and professional learning for all staff focus on securing improvements in pupils' learning through high-quality teaching R3 Improve provision for the systematic development of pupils' literacy, numeracy and digital skills R4 Improve attendance for all groups of pupils R5 Strengthen arrangements to promote pupils' healthy eating and drinking What happens next In accordance with the Education Act 2005, HMCI is of the opinion that this school is in need of significant improvement. The school will draw up an action plan to show how it is going to address the recommendations. Estyn will monitor the school's progress about 12 months after the publication of this report.