Cottam Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils are happy and safe at Cottam Primary School. They build strong relationships with staff.

These relationships inspire pupils to embrace roles where they can help others. For example, older pupils in key stage 2 read with children in the Reception Year. 'Safeguarding champions' support their classmates who may be feeling lonely or worried.

The school has high expectations for all pupils. Pupils typically remember their learning well. They grow in confidence to accept new challenges and experiences.

Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are successful alongside their peers. This helps them to be ready for the next stage of their... education.

Pupils are well behaved and demonstrate good manners.

The school's values of compassion and respect for others underpin these qualities. Children in the Reception Year settle into routines quickly. Across the school, unwanted behaviour rarely disrupts learning.

This creates a calm and productive learning environment.

Pupils enjoy a range of clubs that help to develop their talents. These include choir, ju-jitsu, football and dance.

Older pupils spoke with exhilaration about their residential visit to Snowdonia and their experiences in the local area. For example, they visited Preston North End football ground to learn about the lives of significant local people.

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

The school has improved its curriculum to ensure that it is broad and ambitious.

The curriculum sets out clearly the knowledge and skills that the school wants pupils to learn, from the time they start school to the end of Year 6. The school clearly identifies the needs of pupils with SEND. This helps pupils with SEND to achieve well across the curriculum and participate in all aspects of school life.

Teachers typically have strong subject knowledge. They choose activities that meet pupils' needs. In most subjects, teachers identify how well pupils are progressing through the curriculum.

For example, they use targeted questioning to gauge pupils' knowledge and understanding of recent and prior learning. In these subjects, teachers use this information to revisit content that is not secure and to shape future learning. However, in a small number of subjects, older pupils have gaps in their learning.

This is due to weaknesses in the previous curriculum. On occasion, in these subjects, teachers do not check routinely that pupils have the knowledge that they need to make sense of new learning. As a result, some pupils' knowledge in these subjects is not as secure as it could be.

Staff explicitly teach and model the behaviours that they expect from pupils. This begins when children start school in the Reception Year. Consequently, these children play and learn together extremely well.

Pupils enjoy coming to school and understand the value of high attendance. Most pupils attend school regularly and on time. When a pupil's attendance is low, the school works with the family to provide the right support to bring about improvement.

The school ensures that reading is a priority. It encourages parents and carers to support their children when reading at home. Pupils are enthusiastic about reading.

They talk with excitement about their favourite books and characters. Staff are well trained to deliver the phonics programme. The school makes sure that pupils read from books that are matched accurately to the sounds that they know.

As a result, most become confident and fluent readers by the time they leave key stage 1. However, a very small minority of pupils at the earliest stages of learning to read struggle to read fluently. The support these pupils receive to close gaps in their phonics knowledge is sometimes not effective in helping them to catch up with their peers.

Leaders promote pupils' personal development well. The school encourages pupils to take on leadership roles, such as eco-council, play leaders or sports leaders. Pupils talk enthusiastically about educational visits to different places of worship to learn about different faiths and cultures.

The curriculum helps pupils to understand how to stay safe online and who to talk to if they have worries and concerns. They also know how to look after their mental health and the importance of healthy relationships. The school prepares pupils well for life in modern Britain.

The school carefully considers staff workload and well-being. It provides additional time for staff to fulfil their roles successfully. Governors know the school well.

They provide meaningful support and challenge to leaders.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Due to weaknesses in the previous curriculum in a few subjects, older pupils have gaps in their knowledge.

This makes it difficult for them to build their knowledge when teachers introduce new concepts. This hinders pupils' progress through the curriculum. The school should ensure that the new curriculum in these subjects, and the way teachers deliver it, routinely identifies and addresses gaps in pupils' prior learning.

• At times, the school does not ensure that some pupils who are at the earliest stages of learning to read get the help they need to build their phonics knowledge. This hinders these pupils from learning to blend words with increasing confidence and fluency and catching up with their peers. The school should ensure that staff have the necessary skills to address gaps in pupils' phonics knowledge quickly so that they become confident and fluent readers by the end of key stage 1.

Also at this postcode