Cwmbach Community Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

The headteacher provides outstanding leadership of the school. She makes bold decisions in the best interests of pupils and is supported very well by her deputy. They have been highly successful in improving the quality of teaching and assessment from a low starting point.

In most classes, pupils now achieve well and make strong progress in developing their literacy, numeracy and digital skills. In a few classes, pupils make particularly impressive progress in their writing. All staff benefit from the school's exceptional programme of personal and professional development.

This has had a considerable impact on transforming the culture of the school and the ability of staff to carry out their leadership roles successfully. ...Self-evaluation and improvement processes are highly effective and all staff speak openly about the school's strengths and areas for development. For instance, they recognise the need to ensure pupils are challenged and supported appropriately in all curriculum areas.

They welcome discussion with other professionals and there is a healthy culture of self-reflection within the team. The school provides sensitive and effective support for the well-being of pupils and their families. This includes pupils with additional learning needs and those who are vulnerable.

Teachers often provide interesting, real-life contexts for pupils' learning. They welcome pupils' suggestions about what they would like to learn more about and encourage them to make decisions about how to present their work. This contributes much to pupils' overall sense of well-being and happiness.

Most pupils enjoy school, behave well, and have good independent learning skills. They regularly improve their work and understand their next steps in learning. Learning support assistants are highly effective and make a notable contribution to pupils' progress and well-being.

In a few instances, however, teachers do not match learning tasks to pupils' stages of development well enough. This means that pupils, including a few with the most complex learning needs, do not always make as much progress as they could. Overall, the role of the governing body is underdeveloped.

It does not fulfil its roles and responsibilities well enough, including ensuring that the school's arrangements for safeguarding pupils are sufficiently robust. Recommendations R1 Address the safeguarding issues raised during the inspection R2 Improve the effectiveness of governance, ensuring all governors understand and discharge their roles and responsibilities R3 Ensure that teaching consistently provides the appropriate level of support or challenge across the breadth of the curriculum What happens next The school will draw up an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection. Estyn will invite the school to prepare two case studies on its work in relation to professional learning to develop effective self-evaluation and improvement processes, and developing pupils as effective writers, for dissemination on Estyn's website.