Cherry Tree School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils are excited to come to school each day. Cherry Tree is a school where pupils model the school's motto to 'bring out the best in each other'. This means that pupils, including children in the early years, blossom and grow.

Pupils enjoy the calm and nurturing atmosphere. Staff care well for them. Pupils feel safe to express their own opinions and views.

This helps them to feel happy. Pupils treat others with kindness. Their conduct is exemplary.

The school has high expectations of pupils' achievements that they typically rise to accomplish. Pupils, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), benefit from a well-thought-out ...curriculum and, as a result, succeed.

The exceptional wider development offer for pupils is such that they leave school as confident, articulate and considerate young people.

Pupils throughout school thrive through the many leadership responsibilities that they have.

Pupils appreciate many opportunities to grow their own fruit and vegetables in the school's allotment. They harvest this produce to make and sell a variety of jams and chutneys.

This enables pupils to understand the importance of enterprise.

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

The school has designed a well-ordered and balanced curriculum It has ensured that staff are knowledgeable and confident to teach a broad range of subjects. Overall, pupils learn and achieve increasingly well across the curriculum.

The school has identified the important knowledge and vocabulary that pupils should acquire. On the whole, staff skilfully use assessment strategies to check how well pupils learn. However, in a small number of subjects, assessment information is used less effectively.

As a result, misconceptions in pupils' vocabulary knowledge are not always identified or addressed quickly enough.

The early years, including the provision for two-year-old children, provides an engaging start to children's learning. Children benefit from the relationships that they build with older pupils.

They settle quickly into school routines. However, the school has not decided on the vocabulary that children should learn in readiness for key stage 1. This means that, on occasions, there are missed learning opportunities, which means some children's learning can be less secure than it could be.

Nevertheless, typically, pupils across school are well prepared for what comes next.

The school has cultivated a love of reading. Pupils told inspectors that they enjoy reading because authors challenge their perceptions of life.

They relish being school librarians and enjoy recommending books to their friends. Pupils said that staff include them in deciding on the books to read and listen to.

Pupils begin to learn phonics as soon as they start in the Reception class.

Staff are suitably trained to deliver the phonics programme well. This helps most pupils learn to read accurately. Pupils practise their reading skills using books that match the sounds that they have already learned.

Skilled staff identify pupils who fall behind with the phonics programme and provide effective support to help them to catch up quickly. As a result, most pupils learn to read fluently by the end of Year 2.

The school identifies any additional needs of pupils with SEND effectively.

Staff support pupils with SEND to thrive. Parents and carers appreciate the pastoral support that they receive from school to help them to navigate diagnosis pathways. Staff work collaboratively with parents and external agencies to secure appropriate support for pupils.

The school's high expectations and established routines ensure pupils' excellent behaviour. Staff model the nurturing and caring behaviours that they want the pupils to demonstrate. As a result, behaviour in this school is impeccable.

Pupils have an excellent knowledge of faiths and religions. They respect each other's opinions and value differences between themselves and others. The school offers a wide range of enrichment activities that are carefully tailored to meet pupils' needs.

For example, pupils joined the school's running club and from there joined the local community group. The school works exceedingly well with local groups so that pupils benefit from an incredibly broad range of sports. These strong links also help pupils to further their talents and interests outside of school.

Governors work effectively alongside the school. They provide effective challenge and support to ensure that there is a strong focus on improving the quality of education and personal development that pupils receive. Staff appreciate the time that they are given to fulfil their roles.

They say that this helps them to feel valued and supported.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• In a small number of subjects, staff do not check pupils' understanding of vocabulary knowledge well enough.

This means that, on occasion, some pupils' learning is less secure than others. The school should ensure that staff check on pupils' understanding of important terminology. This would enable pupils to make connections in their learning.

• The school has not identified the important vocabulary that children in the early years should learn. On occasion, this hampers staff from designing learning that builds children's knowledge over time. The school should ensure that it refines its curriculum thinking to determine the vocabulary that children should learn.