Brede Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

Brede Primary is a good school.

Improvements since the previous inspection have successfully raised from satisfactory to good pupils' achievement, the quality of teaching, the curriculum and the overall effectiveness of the Early Years Foundation Stage. This considerable success reflects the school's good capacity to sustain further improvement. Guided by the headteacher's good leadership and high aspiration for the school, the small but dedicated team of staff share a determination and drive to develop further.

The governing body provides the school's leaders with effective support and challenge to achieve this. All have an accurate understanding of the school's strengths and areas still req...uiring further development. Although leaders monitor the quality of provision and pupils' performance thoroughly, these activities and evaluations are not always sufficiently rigorous to make resulting plans for improvement sufficiently tightly focused and precise enough to promote even more rapid improvement.

Pupils overwhelmingly enjoy school. They are motivated and engaged by the effective curriculum and teaching, reflected in their significantly improving attendance. As one parent put it, 'Our children are extremely happy to go to school each day.'

Parents, carers and pupils spoke excitedly about how learning is made surprising and fun, such as the day families arrived at school to find the staff all dressed-up and engaged in an 'Alice in Wonderland' tea-party to mark the start of an open day to celebrate children's achievements. With significant input from the governing body, the school has improved its promotion of community cohesion from inadequate at the previous inspection to good. This has given pupils good opportunities to engage with groups and contexts different from their own, for example through video-conferencing.

Strong relationships throughout the school effectively support pupils' good development and well-being. Pupils new to the school, joining either Reception Year or later year groups, settle quickly and feel warmly welcomed by the school community. Good teaching was observed in all classes, though some inconsistencies remain across the school.

In the small minority of satisfactory lessons, teaching and tasks do not match closely enough the needs of different groups in the class to secure more than expected progress. That said, good and improving rates of progress overall have secured a rising trend in attainment. For the last three years, pupils' results in English and mathematics have been above national averages.

Skilled teaching assistants provide good support for a range of different groups, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Although good overall, the picture of progress in writing is not consistent. Pupils do not always have sufficient opportunities to use and apply the writing skills they are learning by independently producing extended pieces of work.

However, pupils make good use of teachers' effective marking to improve their writing, and have plentiful opportunities to discuss, explore and develop ideas together in readiness for written tasks.

Information about the school

This school is much smaller than most primary schools. Pupils are mainly of White British heritage, and all taught in one of three mixed-age classes, including children in Early Years Foundation Stage.

The proportions are below average of children known to be eligible for free school meals and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities. Larger than usual numbers of children join or leave the school at times other than the normal points of entry, though these have reduced in recent years and the number on roll is very steadily rising. The Nursery, being developed on-site and not yet open, is managed by a private provider and was not part of this inspection.

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