Barlow Hall Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school. Pupils make good and sometimes outstanding progress.

Teaching is good, with some outstanding practice. Effective teaching has brought about on-going improvements in pupils' achievement since the time of the school's previous inspection. The school provides well for pupils who speak English as an additional language, pupils who have special educational needs, including those in the school's additional places for pupils with autism or language difficulties, and pupils known to be eligible for the pupil premium funding.

This enables the pupils in all of these groups to make good progress. Pupils from a wide range of backgrounds learn togeth...er happily. Pupils' behaviour is excellent, they attend regularly and they feel very safe and secure in school.

The headteacher is an inspirational leader. She is ably supported by a strong leadership team, by all of the staff and by knowledgeable and effective governors. Leaders keep a very systematic check on the impact and quality of teaching to ensure that pupils' needs are met well.

This is driving improvements forward vigorously and helping pupils to achieve increasingly well. Children make a good start to their education in the very well led Early Years Foundation Stage. It is not yet an outstanding school because : Although the overall quality of teaching is good, it is not yet consistently outstanding.

This is the main reason why pupils' achievement across the school is also good, rather than outstanding. A very small proportion of teaching still requires improvement. Leaders have already identified these areas of relative weakness and are actively addressing them, but there has not been time for their work to achieve its full effect.

Information about this school

The school is larger than most primary schools. Around a third of pupils are from White British backgrounds and nearly two thirds have English as their home language. Other languages spoken at home by pupils include Arabic, Urdu and Somali, with a further eight home languages, including some Eastern and Western European languages also represented.

The proportion of pupils who join or leave the school at times other than the usual transition points is well above average. The proportion of pupils supported through school action, school action plus, or with a statement of special educational needs is well above average. The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for pupil premium funding is also well above average.

The local authority provides seven additional places at the school for pupils who have autistic spectrum disorders or who have specific speech and language difficulties (known in school as the resourced provision). The school meets the government's current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils' attainment and progress. The school provides a breakfast club and an after-school club every day during term time.