Millbank Gardens Primary Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils are happy within this caring school community. Staff form secure and trusting professional bonds with pupils.

This contributes to pupils feeling safe. Teachers listen to pupils carefully and help them to do well, both personally and in their studies.

Pupils demonstrate high levels of respect for others and strive to embody the school's values of courage, commitment and courtesy.

They make a positive contribution to the wider community, such as volunteering at a community centre to provide companionship to older people.

Leaders enrich the curriculum with opportunities designed to make pupils knowledgeable about and fascinated with the world aro...und them. Pupils are proud of the new skills they have learned through clubs, including cinema club, cooking and yoga, and workshops, for example in robotics and programming.

Leaders ensure strong take up by pupils. Leaders provide all pupils with residential visits where they have new adventures, such as hiking, canoeing and rock climbing.

Parents and carers of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) had high praise for the school's work to help their children grow in confidence and independence.

They appreciate the efforts leaders routinely make to ensure that parents are included in special experiences, including swimming lessons and educational visits with their children.

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

Leaders from across the trust have worked together to construct the school's ambitious curriculum. In many subject areas, such as history, geography, Latin, reading and mathematics, leaders have specified the concepts, skills and vocabulary that pupils must know in order to be able to think critically about what they have learned.

For example, pupils consider how reliable historical sources are and the factors that made significant historical figures popular, or not. However, in a few subjects, leaders are still in the process of defining the small steps in learning that pupils need to take in order to develop detailed knowledge. As a result, pupils find it more difficult in a few subjects to recall important concepts than they do in other subjects.

Leaders ensure that teachers have strong expertise. They present curriculum content with clarity. From the early years onwards, adults focus on developing pupils' language and communication to prepare them for more sophisticated terminology that pupils will need to know for later in the curriculum.

However, in some areas of the curriculum, teachers do not routinely check that pupils have fully understood the meaning of the words they learn to recall. As a result, while pupils can remember complex language, they sometimes struggle to explain what it means, or to use it effectively to help them understand new ideas.

Leaders ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for pupils to read to adults individually, within groups and during lessons.

Pupils enjoy daily story times and take books home regularly to read with their families. The curriculum and regular visits to the library expose pupils to a wide range of high-quality stories, poems and non-fiction texts.

In the Nursery, pupils hear songs, rhymes and stories daily, which prepare them well for learning to read.

From Reception, pupils regularly practise reading. Their phonic knowledge develops well. Leaders provide training to staff in phonics.

They regularly assess pupils' phonic knowledge and adapt their planning to take account of any gaps pupils have. They provide well-targeted help where needed.

Pupils with SEND, including those in the resourced provison, receive the support they need to be happy and successful in school.

Leaders identify pupils' needs swiftly. Teachers make skilful adaptations for them, enabling pupils to learn the curriculum and achieve well.

Teachers support pupils to understand the link between their feelings, their behaviour and its impact on others.

From the early years, pupils take responsibility for their behaviour and are extremely considerate of others. They offer help to others without being asked to. As a result, the school is a harmonious place where pupils support each other's learning and well-being consistently well.

Leaders take every opportunity to help pupils understand themselves and the world around them. This includes mental and physical health, and healthy relationships. Pupils study Britain's parliamentary system and how laws are made.

Leaders build on this, for example through the democratic way that pupil senators are elected to be on the school council, and through visits to the Houses of Parliament. Pupils have many opportunities to reflect on their own and others' beliefs. For example, pupils are taught about one of the British values, linked to groups of people within modern Britain, during each weekly assembly.

They then sit with teachers at lunchtimes and discuss their reflections.

Staff feel very well supported. They appreciate the quality of training they receive from the trust and the care and consideration shown to them by school leaders, including for managing their workload.

The governing body provides appropriate support and challenge.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Staff receive regular training, including discussing safeguarding scenarios to ensure that they are alert to the risks pupils face and understand the proper action to take.

Leaders raise awareness among pupils and their parents about potential dangers to pupils, including online. They work closely with parents and offer early help at the early signs that it may be needed.Leaders ensure that staff and pupils report any concerns so that they can identify those who might be at risk of harm.

They take prompt action to secure all the help that pupils need, making referrals to external agencies where needed.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• The school has not completed its work on the development of all areas of the curriculum. In a few subjects, the school has not defined the knowledge for pupils to learn and how that knowledge will build over time.

As a result, pupils do not develop detailed knowledge and skills in a few areas of the curriculum. In those few areas, pupils sometimes find it challenging to recall what they have been taught. The school should develop the curriculum in those few subject areas with the same breadth and ambition as other subjects.

• Teachers do not check pupils' understanding, including of vocabulary, systematically enough in all areas of the curriculum before they move on to delivering new content. In some cases, new learning does not build precisely on what pupils already know and, as a result, pupils do not routinely understand what they have been taught or use it to make sense of new content. The school should ensure that teachers check pupils' understanding systematically in all areas of the curriculum.