Byron Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school The headteacher provides strong leadership. His high aspirations ensure that pupils achieve increasingly well from their starting points.

Senior and middle leaders are effective in checking the quality of teaching and pupils' progress regularly and bringing about improvements. Governors are ambitious. They know the school's strengths and priorities for improvement and provide good levels of support and challenge.

Pupils' outcomes are improving strongly and have risen significantly since the last inspection. The proportions of pupils reaching the expected standards in Years 1 and 2 phonics are now at the national average. Pupils make good ...progress in a range of subjects across the school, especially in writing.

Across all years, pupils learn to read fluently and with meaning. However, in 2016, key stage 2 pupils' reading outcomes fell. Pupils' abilities to locate and retrieve information under test conditions were insufficiently developed, as were their skills in making inferences and drawing conclusions.

Different groups of pupils, including disadvantaged pupils and those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, make increasingly good progress, because of the well-targeted support they receive. The quality of teaching, learning and assessment has improved notably, and is now good. Staff are keen to learn from each other and from experts in other schools.

On occasions, some teachers do not set tasks for the most able and some disadvantaged pupils that sufficiently challenge them, especially in mathematics. Early years provision is good. The thoughtfully planned activities ignite children's curiosity, indoors and outdoors.

As a result, the proportion of pupils reaching good levels of development is rising, and is just below the national average. The school is a harmonious environment in which pupils from a range of different nationalities and backgrounds work, play and learn successfully together. Parents are positive about the school.

They say how well adults care for their children and that they are safe at all times. The curriculum is well planned to meet pupils' needs, especially those at an early stage of learning English. After-school clubs and the wide range of visits all promote pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development well.

Information about this school

The school meets requirements on the publication of specified information on its website. This is a much larger than the average primary school. The proportion of pupils who are eligible for support through the pupil premium is above average.

The proportion of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities is average. Almost all pupils are from minority ethnic groups, the vast majority being from Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritages. Almost all speak English as an additional language.

The school meets the government's current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils' attainment and progress in reading, writing and mathematics by the end of Year 6. Children in the Reception Year attend full time. Children in the Nursery attend part time.

The governing body makes provision for a daily breakfast club. The school works informally with other primary schools within local authority partnerships and with the Bradford Birth to 19 Teaching School Alliance. Since the last inspection, there have been significant changes in staffing, including senior and middle leaders, a new chair of governors and new governors.