Caversham Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils are proud to be part of the Caversham community. They are resilient and determined to do their best.

Pupils respect each other and their teachers. The school's values are lived and breathed by pupils and adults alike.

Younger children settle quickly into the school.

They develop warm relationships with their older 'buddies', who look after them well. Pupils feel safe and happy at school. They trust staff to take care of them.

If worries arise, adults are on hand to help. Year 6 pupils enjoy relaxing and chatting with their friends in their 'privilege area' during social times.

The school environment is friendly, calm and purposeful....r/>
Pupils are very polite and well behaved, as their teachers expect them to be. When reminders are necessary, adults help pupils to make positive choices and learn from their mistakes.

Adults inspire pupils to aim high and achieve their goals.

Pupils work hard and learn well. They are well prepared for the next stage of their education, both academically and socially. Teachers ensure that pupils read widely and often across a broad range of topics and genres.

This helps pupils to learn about complex issues and social dilemmas, such as the Windrush generation and political prisoners.

What does the school do well and what does it need to do better?

The school's work to address previous weaknesses has been swift, thorough and effective. Straight after the last inspection, useful advice was sought from beyond the school.

In particular, this helped leaders to understand fully the extent of the weaknesses in safeguarding arrangements and prioritise what needed to be done. Ongoing and determined work has ensured that the improvements made have gone beyond the essential changes that were needed. Additional training has given teachers and support staff the confidence to spot and pass on signs that a pupil may be at risk of harm.

Leaders have made it easier for staff to report and record a concern. Records now give a clear and detailed picture of concerns about pupils.

Work to address weaknesses in breaktime supervision and monitoring of pupils' attendance reflects the same rigour and success.

Pupils describe how the new playground zones make them feel safer at breaktime, because adults are easier to find. The outside space is calm. Expectations for attendance and punctuality have been raised through ongoing communication with parents.

Leaders identify quickly where attendance may be a concern and take swift action to help pupils to come to school more often.

Staff are constantly focused on doing their very best for the pupils in their care. They are universally positive about how leaders help them to improve their practice via planned training and helpful advice.

Staff consistently model behaviours that help pupils understand what it means to be successful, confident, responsible and caring citizens – the values that the school aspires for every pupil to develop during their time at Caversham.

Governance is on a journey of improvement. The governing body's knowledge of the school's strengths and improvement priorities has grown significantly.

Governors' checks on safeguarding arrangements are now thorough and have helped leaders to refine this part of their work even more. The evident rigour around safeguarding is spreading into other areas of the governing body's work, but there is more to do.

Learning in the early years gives children a firm foundation on which to build.

Children learn how to cooperate with each other and to work independently, as well as developing their early reading, writing and mathematics. Their wider experiences during the early years are deliberately planned to prepare them well for studying a broad range of subjects during key stage 1 and beyond.

Reading is taught consistently well across the school by adults who are well trained and skilled in their craft.

Pupils at risk of falling behind are identified quickly and get extra support that helps them to keep up with their peers. Adults encourage pupils of all ages to read books from a range of authors, including deliberately chosen texts that link to topics pupils are learning about in their different subjects. Older pupils read confidently and enthusiastically, reflecting thoughtfully on the content of their books.

Pupils learn well across the range of national curriculum subjects. The well-planned curriculum enables them to develop a broad body of knowledge. This equips pupils well for moving on to secondary school.

Pupils try their best in lessons and produce high-quality work. They talked enthusiastically to inspectors about how teaching has developed their love of science, describing how practical work has deepened their knowledge of light and sound.

Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) access the same learning as everyone else.

Adults are alert to pupils' needs and adapt tasks accordingly, so that pupils can complete them to a high standard. Current work to further improve the quality of teaching across the school is helping all pupils, including those with SEND, to do even better than in the past.

The personal development programme successfully promotes the school's ethos of acceptance and inclusion.

A well-planned curriculum helps pupils to become kind, thoughtful young people who respect and appreciate the diversity of the world they live in. Leaders make the most of opportunities for pupils to learn about the many different cultures and religions represented in the school community, such as through inviting parents to talk to pupils.

Senior and middle leaders are enthusiastic about their areas of responsibility and are keen to make them the best that they can be.

Priorities for improvement are identified more precisely for some aspects of the school's work than for others. Leaders' approaches to checking the quality of the school's work across the whole curriculum are being refined, so they can better understand what changes will benefit pupils' learning the most.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

A positive culture of safeguarding now pervades the school. Detailed and relevant training ensures that all staff fully understand their role in keeping children safe. The legally required recruitment and vetting checks are now fully in place for all adults working at the school.

Governors understand and fulfil their legal safeguarding duties. Risks to pupils are well understood and potential concerns are reported promptly. All staff now have access to the school's chosen system for recording and managing concerns.

The designated safeguarding team acts quickly if concerns arise about pupils. Their work is well supported by the effective records that chronicle what staff report, the actions leaders take and the next steps required. Leaders are persistent in pursuing and securing extra help for vulnerable children and their families.

The school's safeguarding curriculum supports pupils to stay safe from harm. For instance, recent work has helped them to learn about consent in an age-appropriate way. As a result, pupils are more alert to when their actions might risk making others feel uncomfortable, and they are more confident to speak up if it happens to them.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Governors do not check other aspects of the school as rigorously as they oversee the arrangements for safeguarding. Consequently, their oversight of the school is not as comprehensive as it could be. Governors should ensure that they are sufficiently well informed about all aspects of the school, so that they can hold leaders more effectively to account for the whole breadth of the school's work.

• Leaders do not monitor some aspects of the school's wider curriculum as effectively as the rest. This leads to some variability in leaders' plans for ongoing improvement. The school should ensure that leaders at all levels look systematically at how to further improve the areas for which they are responsible so that, across the breadth of the curriculum, learning is consistently of the very high quality to which leaders aspire.