Coalway Community Infant School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Coalway Community Infant School is ambitious for pupils and wants them to achieve well. It is bringing about positive changes to ensure the curriculum provides pupils with the knowledge and skills they need.

Nonetheless, the quality of education is not yet good.

The school is working hard to ensure pupils learn how to behave. The 'Coalway Bees' are known and understood by pupils as, 'be kind', 'be supportive' and 'be respectful'.

Pupils understand the difference between right and wrong. Social times are enjoyable. Pupils engage in a wide range of activities that includes the trim trail and ball games.

Typically, they play happily together, and any sq...uabbles are sorted quickly. However, in lessons, pupils can lose focus and disrupt others. This limits everyone's learning.

Pupils value the wide range of opportunities on offer. These develop their skills and interests in many areas, such as sport, music and reading. The school ensures that these opportunities are open to all.

The school offers effective pastoral support to pupils and their families. It works closely with parents to ensure pupils attend regularly. This means that pupils are in school and feel happy, safe and ready to learn.

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

The school has been through a turbulent time since the previous inspection. Recent staffing and recruitment challenges have stalled improvements to the curriculum. Despite this school leaders provide clarity and direction.

They have accurately identified the improvements necessary to ensure pupils receive a good quality of education.

Significant work has been undertaken to implement an ambitious and exciting curriculum. However, it is too soon to see the full impact of this work.

While the curriculum is in place, some pupils are not able to make links between their learning across subjects. This hinders the depth of their learning.

The school is clear about the knowledge it wants pupils to learn and remember, including children in the early years.

However, it does not have rigorous systems in place to assess how well pupils remember the knowledge they have been taught. Therefore, some pupils' recall of prior learning is insecure. This means pupils are not well prepared for future learning.

The school has robust and clear processes for identifying pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). The school monitors, evaluates and reviews interventions to check if they are meeting pupils' needs. The school is aware that the improvements needed in the quality of education are the same for all pupils.

The school expects every pupil to leave the school as a fluent reader. Its work is having a positive impact. The implementation of the school's phonics programme is securely in place.

Pupils' reading books closely match the sounds they know. This helps them to get off to a great start with their reading. This is reflected in the continuous improvements seen in the Year 1 phonics screening check.

Staff choose books to help extend pupils vocabulary and enhance their love of reading.

The wider curriculum offers experiences such as trips and speakers into school. Trips inspire pupils and help to build their knowledge and understanding of the world around them.

The school plans trips carefully to enhance learning, such as visits to St Fagan's, Gloucester Cathedral and Bristol Zoo. There is a range of opportunities to develop and stretch pupils' talents and interests including gymnastics, swimming and music.

Pupils learn about different faiths and cultures, respect and democracy.

They learn the importance of healthy eating, maintaining an active lifestyle and keeping mentally healthy. They know how to stay safe online, for example, by not sharing personal information with people they do not know.

Over time, governors have not held school leaders accountable for the quality of education pupils receive.

This means that until recently improvements have not happened as quickly as required.

Parents who communicated with inspectors have mixed views about the school. Some share frustration with communication and the on-going staff changes.

However, other parents are very positive about the school's work and are confident their children are happy and safe.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• The school has an ambitious curriculum in place.

However, some pupils are not able to make links between their learning across the subjects they study. This can hinder the depth of their learning. The school must ensure that all components are consistently in place so that pupils are able to connect their knowledge more securely.

The school has not established rigorous systems to assess how well pupils remember the knowledge they have been taught. Therefore, pupils' recall of prior learning is insecure. The school need to ensure assessment is used effectively to check what pupils know and remember across all subjects.

• At times, a minority of pupils do not behave well. This can disrupt learning and hamper the amount of progress pupils make. The school must ensure that all staff follow the agreed approaches to manage pupils' behaviour.

• Over time, governors have not held school leaders accountable. This means that until recently improvements were not happening as quickly as required. Governors must ensure that systems are in place to provide an effective level of challenge to school leaders.

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