Lyne and Longcross CofE Aided Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Outcome

Lyne and Longcross C of E Aided Primary School continues to be a good school.

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils and parents like the small 'village feel' of the school. The school is inclusive and ensures that all families are made to feel welcome within the school community. Staff in Nursery help children to settle in and begin building their confidence right from the start.

Pupils in different year groups can get to know and support each other through the school's 'buddy' system. Pupils are friendly and welcoming. They told the inspector that if anyone new came to their school, everyone would want to be their friend.

Pupils are confident in expressing their t...houghts and feelings. They know they can talk to staff or use the 'talking trees' in their classrooms if they have a worry.

The school has high expectations for all pupils' achievement.

Pupils enjoy their learning and work hard to live up to the school's high expectations. As a result, most pupils achieve well. The achievement of a small number of pupils is not as strong as it could be, because not every pupil receives consistently effective support in reading.

The school has an active 'junior leadership team'. Pupils enjoy the trips and enriching experiences the school provides. The school thinks carefully about how to provide increased opportunities for independence as pupils get older.

For example, younger pupils enjoy the shorter overnight and residential trips, while Year 6 undertakes a longer stay, further from home.

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

Since the headteacher's appointment in 2019, the school has worked to redevelop its curriculum to ensure it is broad, ambitious and logically sequenced. Staff have been well supported to develop their own expertise and understanding in the subjects they lead.

An ongoing programme of professional development for teachers is supporting them to become increasingly expert across the subjects that they teach. As a result, in most subjects, teachers explain learning clearly to pupils and most pupils achieve well.As the school has implemented the new curriculum, it has identified areas needing further refinement to ensure that the curriculum is having the intended impact.

For example, in some subjects the school has planned too much content, and this makes it more challenging for teachers to focus on the core knowledge that pupils need to learn to make progress through the curriculum. The school is aware of this and work to refine curriculum design is rightly ongoing. Across subject areas, the school has considered how the curriculum for early years prepares children for Year 1 and beyond.

However, the school recognises that the precision of the curriculum in early years could be sharpened to ensure that all children develop the knowledge, skills and learning behaviours that will support them to be successful as they move into Year 1 and then through the school.

In September 2021, the school introduced a new approach to teaching phonics and early reading and staff have been trained appropriately. Staff, therefore, have expertise in the teaching of reading.

Most pupils who fall behind in reading are supported to catch up through effective additional help. However, a small number of pupils, including some pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), are not receiving the same carefully tailored catch-up programme, nor are they getting frequent enough opportunities to practise reading and re-reading books that match the sounds they have learned. These pupils are not catching up as rapidly as they could, therefore.

Teachers check pupils' learning accurately in reading and mathematics. In these subjects, this process is used to check pupils' understanding, to identify and correct misunderstandings and to inform next steps in teaching. In other subjects, the school is still refining its approach.

Pupils of all ages work hard to demonstrate the school's values of courage, faith and respect. Behaviour in classrooms and at breaktimes and lunchtimes is safe and calm. The school recognises that some pupils would benefit from more support to resolve friendship difficulties.

The school has recently rewritten its behaviour policy to address this and has additional plans to further support some pupils at breaktimes and lunchtimes. The school maintains a strong focus on attendance and punctuality, working closely with families who need any additional support.

Pupils' personal development is considered carefully.

The school's Christian character is central. Pupils have ongoing opportunities to reflect on their own beliefs and values. Pupils learn about the beliefs of others and learn to value difference.

Through the school's curriculum for personal, social and health education (PSHE), pupils learn how to live healthy and positive lives. The school works very closely with families to deliver appropriate relationships and sex education (RSE) to pupils.

Those responsible for governance have a very clear vision for the school and work closely with leaders to ensure that the education the school provides is having a positive impact on pupils.

Staff, and leaders at all levels, feel well supported in their roles.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• A small number of pupils who have fallen behind in reading, including some pupils with SEND, do not receive fully effective support to catch up.

While these pupils are carefully supported in class with their reading, they require more opportunities to plug gaps in their knowledge and understanding of the alphabetic code, and more opportunities to apply their knowledge to reading decodable books. The school should ensure that these pupils receive even sharper catch-up support, and more opportunities to practise their reading. ? In some subjects, the sequencing of some knowledge lacks clarity.

As a result, learning lacks depth and pupils are not given enough opportunities to revisit and secure core knowledge. The school needs to refine the curriculum so that there is a common understanding in all subjects about the core knowledge that pupils need to learn and remember at each stage to make progress through the school's curriculum.

Background

When we have judged a school to be good, we will then normally go into the school about once every four years to confirm that the school remains good.

This is called an ungraded inspection, and it is carried out under section 8 of the Education Act 2005. We do not give graded judgements on an ungraded inspection. However, if we find evidence that a school would now receive a higher or lower grade, then the next inspection will be a graded inspection, which is carried out under section 5 of the Act.

Usually this is within one to two years of the date of the ungraded inspection. If we have serious concerns about safeguarding, behaviour or the quality of education, we will deem the ungraded inspection a graded inspection immediately.

This is the first ungraded inspection since we judged the school to be good in June 18.

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