Bowker Vale Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school Inspirational leadership from the headteacher and her highly effective senior leadership team, mean that this school has made significant improvements since the previous inspection.

Leaders have demonstrated a clear capacity to improve the school with the work they have done on raising attainment in spelling, grammar and punctuation, and in improving the progress of White British pupils' writing. Pupils' behaviour is excellent because of the emphasis that staff place on pupils making the right choices. Pupils' progress in mathematics is significantly above that seen nationally, and their progress in reading and writing is also above average.
<...br/>Pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities make good progress in reading, writing and mathematics, due to the effective support they receive. Safeguarding in the school is a strength. It is effectively led so that pupils feel safe.

Staff are vigilant and receive regular safeguarding training. Teachers ensure that clear assessments of pupils' prior learning inform their plans. Teachers' excellent subject knowledge enables pupils to achieve very high rates of progress in mathematics.

Pupils in the specialist resourced provision make excellent progress in their work and personal development. The excellent relationships between pupils and staff are highly effective in promoting pupils' personal development. Pupils display a clear love of learning.

This is an outstanding aspect of this school's work. Children in the early years make good progress to achieve broadly average standards, having started nursery with skills below those typical of their age. However, they are not consistently given opportunities to contribute their ideas to activities.

The quality of pupils' handwriting varies between classes and year groups. Leaders' plans for improvement do not have a sharp enough focus on setting aspirational and measurable targets for pupils. Consequently, governors' awareness of how the funding for disadvantaged pupils is making a difference is not as strong as it should be.

There are inconsistencies in the quality of teaching, including in the early years. Although never less than good, the quality of questioning varies between classes. The challenge for the most able and the most able disadvantaged pupils does not stretch pupils' thinking sufficiently to enable them to achieve the high standards in reading and writing of which they would otherwise be capable.

Information about this school

The school meets requirements on the publication of specified information on its website. Since the last inspection, the school has established a specialist resourced provision for six pupils aged 7 to 11 who require support for behaviour and social, emotional and mental health needs. The school is larger than the average-sized primary school.

The proportion of disadvantaged pupils is above the national average. The proportion of pupils from minority ethnic groups is much higher than average. The proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language is much higher than the national average.

The proportion of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is below average. The proportion of pupils with a statement of special educational needs or education, health and care plan is larger than average. The school meets the government's current floor standards, which are the minimum expectations for pupils' attainment and progress in English and mathematics by the end of Year 6.

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