Homefield VC CofE Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils are met by welcoming staff at the start of each day. Teachers quickly pick up on how pupils are feeling and provide support when needed.

Where pupils have any worries, teachers help them sort these out. Pupils feel happy and safe because they know they are listened to.

Everyone learns about the school's values and one of the most important of these is respect.

Pupils behave well. They demonstrate respect in how they treat each other with kindness and tolerance.

Pupils get lots of opportunities to develop leadership skills.

Playleaders take great pride in supporting other pupils, including pupils with special educational needs and/or d...isabilities (SEND), to be included in games and activities at break and lunchtimes. This creates a pleasant and friendly atmosphere around the school.

Pupils are achieving increasingly well.

This is because the school has high expectations and has improved significantly the quality of the curriculum and how well it is taught. Pupils find lessons interesting and engaging. For example, children in early years enjoy making their own obstacle course and creating recipes for 'mud macchiatos'.

There is something to capture all interests.

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

Since the previous inspection, the school and local authority have worked together to successfully address a decline in standards and low achievement. The local authority started this process by putting in place an interim improvement board.

This board ensured that governance challenged and supported the school to improve effectively. Leaders have addressed a period of turbulence and raised standards. They have involved and included parents and carers through 'Parent Cafes', so that parents are confident their views are listened to.

The school has put in place a new broad and ambitious curriculum, which clearly defines the knowledge pupils should learn. This includes a complete redevelopment of the early years curriculum, which supports children to develop in each area of early learning.

The school provides extensive training for staff in how to teach the new curriculum well.

This includes development of teachers' subject knowledge and how to precisely adapt learning to meet the needs of pupils with SEND. Staff value this, as it supports both their well-being and workload. Teachers help pupils to make connections with previous learning and consistently check how well they have understood new knowledge.

This enables pupils, including pupils with SEND, to build and retain knowledge well. For example, in music, pupils develop their understanding of rhythm and musical notation so that they can apply these confidently to a performance using glockenspiels.

The school has an effective approach to teaching children to read and write.

Phonics is taught well from early years. Children successfully use phonics as their basis for reading unfamiliar words. Staff develop children's communication and language skills right from Nursery Year.

They do this through high-quality discussions about what children explore in learning activities. This provides an excellent foundation for learning to read. Pupils who are behind with reading get precisely targeted support to catch up.

This includes additional support for pupils with SEND where they need it. The school promotes a love of reading. Pupils are enthusiastic about the diverse range of books that they read.

As a result, standards of how well pupils can read and write have improved significantly. However, there is still a minority of pupils who do not read with fluency or produce writing of the standard they should. This is because the approaches that the school has put in place need more time to become established fully and realise their impact.

The school has thought carefully about how the environment pupils learn in can be best suited to pupils' individual needs. Effective individual support is put in place to address any barriers to either positive attendance or behaviour. This, in combination with the respectful and tolerant school ethos, means that pupils both attend and behave well.

Personal development is promoted well. Pupils learn about relationships, staying safe and understanding difference. Pupils build character and social bonds on residential visits and school trips.

They learn about community and charity work, for example through the harvest collection for the local food bank and performing Christmas songs at the local care home. Pupils develop their talents and interests through a range of clubs such as ukulele and various sports clubs.

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 approach to teaching writing is not well enough established. As a result, a minority of pupils do not produce writing of the quality they should because they have not secured basic foundational writing knowledge. The school needs to ensure that it provides ongoing training for staff in the school's new approach to teaching writing, so that all pupils consistently produce the quality of writing that they are capable of.

• A small number of pupils need more support to confidently blend words using their established knowledge of phonics. Therefore, these pupils do not read with the fluency they should. The school needs to ensure that where there are gaps in how fluently pupils can read, these are identified and closed swiftly so that all pupils are helped to read confidently and fluently.