Nightingale Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils are happy and motivated to learn. Strong relationships between adults and pupils help pupils feel safe in school. The school values of respect, courage, compassion and friendship permeate throughout.

Right from Reception Year, children play well together and enjoy learning collaboratively.

The school aspires for all pupils to experience a broad range of learning opportunities and achieve well. Pupils are known as individuals.

Bespoke support for those pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) enables them to learn effectively. Staff tirelessly encourage pupils to achieve their very best.

Pupils are encouraged to develop ...a range of broader skills.

They speak enthusiastically about their first aid training. They also enjoy helping to improve the school through leadership roles such as librarians, young governors and pupil 'future leaders'. Pupils understand the importance of supporting their wider community.

They learn how to put together food parcels that make healthy, nutritious meals through working with the local community pantry.

A range of visits both locally and further afield enrich pupils' learning experiences. Through their trip to Wales, Year 6 pupils develop resilience and independence.

Furthermore, visitors into school such as from an Arctic explorer and Olympians broaden pupils' horizons and knowledge of life beyond school.

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

Children get off to a strong start to their education as soon as they join the school. In many subjects, the important knowledge and skills that pupils must learn and the order in which they should learn them have been identified right from the start of Reception to the end of Year 6.

This ensures that teachers know exactly what they need to teach so that pupils build understanding over time. For example, in design technology, pupils develop an increasingly complex understanding year on year of how mechanisms make objects move.

However, in a few subjects, the precise knowledge that pupils need to learn and when they need to learn it is not clear enough.

In these cases, teachers do not have clarity about what pupils must know securely at each step of their learning. For example, in history the important knowledge that pupils must remember about the past is not identified precisely. This means that the information pupils are taught is sometimes not what they need to know to be ready for the next part of their learning.

The school has focused on building teachers' knowledge of how to teach well. There is a clear, consistent approach to teaching across the school. In many subjects, teachers' subject knowledge is secure and they provide work which helps pupils to learn well.

However, occasionally, teachers' subject knowledge is not as strong as it could be. Where this is the case, the activities that teachers design do not always help some pupils learn as much as they could.

Support for pupils with SEND is a strength of the school.

Pupils' individual needs are identified using a variety of well-considered strategies. Specially chosen resources ensure that pupils can access the curriculum effectively. For example, when learning how to sew some pupils use larger needles, which helps them to learn to sew successfully.

The school wants all pupils to be confident and fluent readers. Carefully chosen reading materials develop pupils' understanding of language and extend their vocabulary. Children learn to read right from the start of Reception using a well-structured programme.

They read books which are matched to the sounds that they know, generally supported effectively by well-trained staff.

Pupils behave well. In lessons they work hard and focus on their learning.

Pupils are polite and well mannered. Older pupils act as strong role models for younger pupils, demonstrating positive attitudes to learning. The school actively encourages high attendance.

Effective approaches towards this have resulted in most pupils attending school regularly.

The school provides many opportunities to support pupils' personal development.In Reception, children learn how to keep healthy.

The well-resourced outdoor area enables them to keep physically fit. A wide variety of competitive sports opportunities and extracurricular clubs encourage pupils to keep active. Pupils also learn age-appropriate knowledge about how to keep themselves safe online, including how to deal with cyber-bullying.

All staff and governors are determined to continue to improve the school. Staff feel well supported to focus on making a difference to pupils' learning. Well-trained subject leaders lead their subjects with confidence.

Staff are happy working at this school. They all strive to do their very best for the pupils and their families.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• In a few subjects, the important knowledge that pupils need to learn is not identified precisely enough. Teachers do not always know exactly what they need to teach to ensure that pupils build knowledge coherently over time. The school needs to identify the exact knowledge that pupils need to remember securely in all subjects so that they are ready for their next steps in learning and achieve well.

Sometimes teachers do not have the detailed subject knowledge required to teach the intended curriculum. The activities that teachers design do not always enable pupils to learn as much as they could. The school should ensure that teachers have comprehensive subject-specific knowledge in all subjects so that they can support pupils to achieve well across the full curriculum.

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