Mary Immaculate V.R.C. School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Mary Immaculate Catholic Primary School has a wonderfully caring and nurturing ethos underpinned by strong values and virtues. There is a distinct focus on equity of opportunity for all and pupils' opinions and aspirations are at the heart of the school's activities. Staff give a high priority to ensuring pupils' well-being and they strive to ensure that all pupils' individual needs are met.

Pupils enjoy school and most make good progress during their time there when compared to their starting points. The behaviour of nearly all pupils is good. The school is well led by a dynamic and committed headteacher.

She has worked with parents, staff and pupils to create a vision that is specific and appropriate to the needs of the ...school. The headteacher has high expectations of herself and others and works tirelessly with other leaders to improve pupil outcomes and well-being. There is a warm, supportive and productive working relationship between teachers and pupils.

Teachers plan a broad range of engaging and interesting activities across the curriculum. The pace of learning is good on the whole and most teachers use a range of questioning techniques effectively to develop pupils' understanding and promote thinking skills. In general, teachers provide pupils with useful feedback that enables them to improve their work.

However, feedback on written work is not always sharp and focused enough on the task-specific areas that pupils need to improve and teachers do not provide pupils with sufficient opportunities to respond to their guidance. Outdoor learning for the very youngest pupils is well developed. However, where outdoor learning is less effective, activities are not suitably challenging for all pupils and do not develop pupils' skills well enough.

Pupils play a prominent role in the everyday life at the school. For example, they work dynamically in their roles as members of Y Senedd and its sub committees to discuss and improve aspects of school life for the benefit of all. Another good example is how pupils in Year 4 acquire and develop useful life skills in their roles as peer tutors as they work on developing younger peers' confidence, fluency and a love of reading during well-planned and delivered sessions.

Recommendations R1 Ensure that outdoor learning develops pupils' skills effectively and provides a suitable level of challenge for all pupils R2 Ensure that feedback from teachers targets the next steps in pupils' learning effectively and that pupils have regular opportunities to improve their own work