Cotwall End Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

This is a good school.

Pupils achieve well. Standards at the end of Year 6 are improving quickly and are currently above average. Disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs make outstanding progress.

Teachers have high expectations of how much pupils will learn in lessons. Teachers and teaching assistants question pupils very well to check that they fully understand what they have learnt. The extra support given to individual pupils is highly successful in helping them to catch up with others.

The school is successful in encouraging pupils to read widely. Pupils behave well, both in and out of lessons. They are invariably polite and ...respectful towards others.

The school has good systems for ensuring pupils' safety, and parents have great confidence in the school's ability to keep their children safe. The headteacher provides an outstanding role model for other staff in all she does. Leaders and governors have an accurate view of the school's main strengths and weaknesses.

They have taken effective actions to improve teaching and raise achievement since the school was last inspected. Leaders have made good use of extra funding to make sure that disadvantaged pupils make faster progress and close the gap in standards with their peers. Children make good progress in the early years, where standards are improving rapidly.

Staff work very well as a team to ensure that children are well prepared for Year 1. The curriculum is very effective in teaching pupils about British values. Pupils are very well informed about current affairs.

It is not yet an outstanding school because : Not all teachers check pupils' progress in lessons quickly enough, so do not provide them with the extra support or more demanding tasks that they need in order to make the best possible progress. Pupils do not make as much progress in writing as they do in reading and mathematics. They do not form their letters accurately.

Leaders do not evaluate the value for money that the extra funding for physical education and sport is providing.

Information about this school

The school is larger than the average-sized primary school. Children attend the pre-school part time and Reception classes full time.

Almost all pupils are White British. An average proportion of pupils is disabled or has special educational needs. The proportion of disadvantaged pupils supported through the pupil premium (additional funding for pupils currently known to have been eligible for free school meals at any time in the last six years and children in the care of the local authority) is average.

The school meets the government's current floor standards, which set the minimum expectations for pupils' attainment and progress in reading, writing and mathematics. The school operates from two buildings: one housing Key Stage 2 pupils and the other for the early years and Key Stage 1. In July 2013, asbestos was found in the Key Stage 1 building.

The pupils were immediately evacuated and the whole school reorganised. Children from the early years went to a different school's site and were taught there. Pupils from Key Stage 1 moved into the Key Stage 2 building, where classes were combined to make room for them.

All resources, furniture, equipment and pupils' work from the Key Stage 1 building was lost owing to the contamination. The pupils returned to the building in December 2013. Two weeks later, the same building was flooded and an electrical fault during the subsequent drying process led to a fire, leading to even more disruption.