Meadowcroft Community Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

This is a good school that has improved very quickly under the very strong leadership of the relatively new headteacher.

Since she arrived there has been a concerted drive for improvement that has had an extremely positive effect on the work of the school. Strategies to raise pupils' attainment are well considered and are proving effective. Pupils' attainment is now above average at the end of Year 2 and is rising further as improved provision lower down the school begins to filter through to older year groups.

Pupils are now achieving well throughout the school. They get off to a good start in the Early Years Foundation Stage and then continue to make good progress in the rest of the school.... Pupils make slightly faster progress in English than in mathematics.

In English, a sustained focus on improving teaching has proved effective and skills are being taught very effectively, with differing needs met especially well. In mathematics, although teaching is good most of the time, there are occasions when work is not pitched at the right level for all pupils. There is a well structured curriculum in English that helps teachers to develop pupils' skills systematically.

In mathematics, planning has not yet been adapted well enough to reflect the needs of the school. This means that the way in which pupils' numeracy skills are built is not mapped out clearly enough. Adults provide high quality care to pupils.

Because the school is small, they know each pupil extremely well and ensure that they become very responsible citizens who are well prepared for the next stage of their education. There is a delightful atmosphere in lessons and pupils are brilliant ambassadors for the school; they learn good values and behave well, growing enormously in confidence and self-esteem and developing very positive attitudes towards learning. Healthy lifestyles are promoted very effectively, as is demonstrated by the school's success in gaining Healthy School accreditation.

Pupils feel extremely safe at school and they are rightly very confident that any worries will be dealt with quickly by staff. This is a school that is not standing still because leaders are determined to do the best for pupils and are always striving to improve. The new headteacher has created an ethos in which all members of the school community are valued and respected.

There is a strong drive for further improvement based on good systems for checking school effectiveness that include detailed assessment information for checking pupils' progress. Subject leaders are keen and enthusiastic but most are new to their role and they do not yet play a big enough part in analysing this data for their subjects or in visiting lessons so that they can help teaching to improve further. The school's good capacity to improve further is demonstrated in the successful way that leaders have, since the last inspection, improved from satisfactory to good key areas such as achievement, teaching and learning, leadership and overall effectiveness.

Information about the school

Most pupils come to this smaller-than-average-sized infant school from the local community. The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals is broadly average. The school is admitting more pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds than it did in the past, with 11 different languages represented, including Filipino, Korean and Polish.

Very few of these pupils are in the early stages of learning English. The proportion of pupils identified as having special educational needs and/or disabilities is average. Children in the Early Years Foundation Stage are taught in a single-age Reception class.

The headteacher took up post in September 2010. The school has several awards including Healthy School accreditation and an Activemark. The on-site Nursery is not managed by the governing body and was inspected separately.