Buttsbury Infant School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

This is an outstanding school.

It provides a harmonious and welcoming learning environment where pupils enjoy learning and feel very safe and secure. The school's highly effective care, guidance and support system, together with its very positive partnership with parents and carers, ensures that pupils and their families are very well supported. Parents and carers recognise the school's hard work in its commitment to maintaining a high quality of education.

Their trust and confidence are clearly reflected in their comments, such as, 'This school is a very happy place for children to start their education' and 'Although a large school, I never feel that my child is overlooked.' Pupils develop ...excellent personal and social skills and they are extremely considerate to each other. High attendance reflects pupils' enormous enthusiasm for school and learning.

Their ability to work really well together from an early age, along with their excellent literacy, numeracy and information and communication technology skills, prepares them very well for their future education. Pupils' achievement is outstanding. Their attainment is high and they make good progress.

Children enter the Reception class with skills and experiences that are expected for their age. Progress had been satisfactory in the Early Years Foundation Stage over the past few years and, by the time they reached Year 1, most had achieved standards that were average. However, inspection evidence shows that children are now making good progress consistently and achieving well in all areas of learning because of the much improved provision over the past year.

Throughout the school, pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities make good progress as a result of the consistent and well-targeted support they receive from all staff. Staff have excellent relationships with pupils and have high expectations of their behaviour and work. They make good use of interactive whiteboards and other resources and engage pupils well in paired and whole-class discussions that support their learning well.

In the best lessons, teachers are clear about what they want pupils to learn and how this will be achieved, matching work well to individual needs. Teachers assess pupils' progress during lessons well through skilful questioning. Nonetheless, assessment information is not always used effectively enough to plan writing activities to meet the varying needs of all pupils.

This is an issue the school is tackling. Sometimes, teachers spend too long on whole class discussions, leaving too little time for the written tasks that the pupils are expected to do. Consequently, pupils do not always achieve as well as they can in writing.

The school has a good capacity for sustained improvement, as is illustrated by its commitment to sustaining the high standards of attainment that pupils achieve. The expertise, ambition and focus provided by the leadership team have ensured that the staff, governors, parents and carers share a common vision for the good of the pupils. Leaders have recently strengthened the assessment procedures to track pupils' progress more effectively with a strong focus on improving pupils' writing skills further.

This is being implemented successfully. The school's self-evaluation is accurate, and this successfully informs the school's priorities for improvement planning. The governors have a clear understanding of the school's performance.

They are proactive and provide excellent support and challenge to the school.

Information about the school

This is a larger than average infant school with four form entry. The overwhelming majority of pupils are White British.

The proportions of pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds and those who speak English as an additional language are well below average. There are no pupils at the early stages of learning English. The proportions of pupils who are known to be eligible for free school meals are low.

Fewer pupils than average are identified as having special educational needs and/or disabilities. Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage are taught in the Reception classes. The school holds Activemark and Advanced Healthy Schools awards.

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