Funtington Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils at Funtington flourish personally.

The exceptional personal development programme brings out pupils' wonderful character attributes. The school acts as one family. Pupils see the good in others and are very accepting of those who may be different.

The school's highly inclusive approach carefully supports pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) to access all the school has to offer.

The school expects pupils to do their best. Pupils eagerly respond to this and love learning new things.

The 'Funtington Footprints' guide their learning and behaviours. Caring pupils behave well in lessons and at playtimes. Children in the ...early years settle in confidently and follow routines quickly.

Pupils know they are safe here.

Pupils have rich experiences that broaden their awareness of life beyond their small school. This includes thoughtfully planned trips, including overnight stays.

Pupils develop healthy lifestyles and know how important it is to be physically active. The school also ensures that every pupil can swim. The school offers everyone a chance to join in music and sports activities.

The school's productions excite pupils to share their talents. Pupils are actively involved in the community, for example, fundraising and supporting the elderly who may live alone.

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

Rapid and highly effective work has addressed previous shortfalls in the quality of education.

The school redesigned its curriculum so that essential knowledge is carefully sequenced across all classes. A two-year cycle ensures that the school's curriculum remains ambitious for mixed-aged classes. Pupils achieve well as reflected in published outcomes.

Nevertheless, some teachers have not checked pupils' understanding over time. This has led to some pupils with knowledge gaps in their learning and, therefore, hindered them from reaching higher standards.

Staff greatly appreciate the investment in their professional development.

The school has focused on training staff to teach the curriculum in a consistent and effective way. Teachers explain new ideas clearly and they revisit important content that pupils need to remember. There is also a big push on pupils' vocabulary development in different subjects.

However, the school can see that teachers are not always setting the right work and also not providing pupils with enough opportunities to extend and practise their writing skills. Where this happens, pupils do not learn as well as they could.

A vibrant reading culture enthuses pupils to read widely.

The brand-new library is a centrepiece that motivates pupils to visit. After the last inspection, the school has retrained all staff to improve the teaching of reading. This has made the implementation of the phonics programme much stronger.

Children in the Reception Year start this curriculum early on and pupils' progress across the phonics curriculum is now more regularly checked. Consequently, the school quickly spots struggling readers. However, some older pupils still lag behind.

To address this, the school has boosted the amount of daily intensive English support for these pupils. This is becoming more effective in helping them to catch up faster.

In the early years, adults plan purposeful activities that highly promote children's language development and interests.

Children are absorbed in their play and are keen to tell others about what they are doing. Staff use questions well to help children gain new knowledge and words. Well-rehearsed routines develop children's independence.

A strength is how quickly the school identifies pupils with SEND. Staff work extremely well with families. This ensures that pupils are fully included in school life.

In lessons, teachers are developing their skills in how best to adapt learning tasks for some pupils with SEND.

The work to improve pupils' attendance has been relentless. The school is using research and government guidance to shape an effective attendance strategy.

The school leans well on professional services to help families. Though not yet shown in historical attendance data, the school is removing barriers for vulnerable pupils. As a result, more pupils are attending regularly.

An exemplary personal development offer runs through everything in the school. The curriculum for personal, social, health and economic education is uniquely designed to best serve pupils' needs. Pupils strongly enact the school's values.

They build their resilience, confidence and outlook on life. Pupils are taught how to stay healthy, manage money and value different cultures and diversity. The many clubs and visitors inspire and enrich pupils' character formation.

This prepares pupils very well for secondary school.

Governors strongly support and challenge the school. They keep the pace of the school's key priorities moving.

Parents unanimously see positive changes and praise highly the staff's care and commitment to pupils.

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's assessment checks are not always identifying the right knowledge gaps that pupils might have.

This then impacts negatively upon the progress that some pupils make through the planned curriculum and in how highly they achieve. The school should further train all staff to check how securely pupils are knowing more and remembering more of the curriculum. ? Some work set for pupils does not help them to learn key essential knowledge.

At times, there are also underdeveloped opportunities for pupils to write across the curriculum. This means that some pupils, including those with SEND, do not achieve as strongly as they could. The school should continue to support staff in planning high-quality activities to ensure pupils acquire deep knowledge of the curriculum.