Oaklands Primary Academy

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Pupils enjoy their time at this school where staff are approachable and kind. Pupils' social and emotional development is supported from the early years onwards.

Pupils are confident in this safe and nurturing school. Children settle well when they join the school. The school promotes its values of the 'five Rs' with pupils, using these to foster positive working relationships.

Pupils are polite and friendly. They are keen to learn, and they typically respond well to teachers' requests. However, when pupils have not been taught all they need to know to complete work set by their teachers, they can become distracted and disturb the learning of others.

The scho...ol has not set out clearly how all staff should respond in such instances.

Trust leaders, governors and the school are keen to strengthen the school's work to benefit all of its pupils. In recent time, the school has taken steps to redesign its curriculum.

However, the school has not identified specifically all that pupils need to know and remember in each subject and the order in which it should be taught. As a consequence, the curriculum does not support pupils to achieve as well as they should, including in the early years and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). This is reflected in national test results, the work pupils produce and in what pupils know and can do across the curriculum.

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

The school has designed a curriculum that is broad for all pupils, including those with SEND. For each subject, the school has identified the important subject content pupils need to know and remember by the end of their primary school education. However, the curriculum is still in development.

In some areas, including the early years, the order in which knowledge should be taught has not been sequenced to enable pupils to learn fundamental concepts before moving on to more complex ideas.

Staff have received training and support to familiarise themselves with the new curriculum and the resources that are provided for them. Staff are motivated and committed.

However, some curriculum thinking and training provide limited clarity for teachers about what should be taught and when to build pupils' knowledge securely, including pupils with SEND. Without this clarity, leaders' checks on the curriculum do not help them to identify what is working well and which areas of the curriculum require further refinement. This prevents the school from identifying the additional support and resources that staff need to deliver the curriculum effectively over time.

As a result, pupils, including children with SEND and children in the early years, are not well supported to understand and remember all that they should.

The school identifies the individual needs of pupils with SEND effectively. Additional support is carefully identified and shared with all staff.

Teachers use a range of approaches to check pupils' understanding, including pupils with SEND. However, the lack of clarity about the key knowledge that all pupils should learn and the order in which they should learn it means that checks on pupils' learning are not routinely well focused. Sometimes, gaps in pupils' knowledge are missed.

Consequently, when pupils, including pupils with SEND, are moved on to new learning before they have mastered what they need to, it is difficult for them to understand new content.

The school places importance on reading. In the Nursery class, children enjoy rhymes, songs and stories.

This prepares children for learning to read from Reception, where they are taught to recognise sounds and their corresponding letters. Training ensures that staff are familiar with the structured phonics curriculum. They follow the sequence of learning set out within the scheme.

However, teaching does not ensure that pupils build up their knowledge of phonic sounds securely. Pupils do not routinely read books containing the sounds that they are learning. As a result, pupils do not recall some sounds accurately, and this prevents them from decoding unfamiliar words and reading fluently.

Pupils who find reading more difficult receive support and additional opportunities to read with an adult, but this does not focus precisely on the key sounds they need to learn. In time, most pupils do learn to read. Older pupils enjoy reading independently and discuss their class reading books with enthusiasm.

The school does not ensure that all staff have clear guidance to help them to respond in a consistent way when pupils' behaviour does not meet the school's high expectations. As a result, some pupils learn in settled and calm classrooms, while in others, pupils experience disruption to their learning of the curriculum. The school takes suitable action to support pupils to attend school regularly.

Leaders are focused on improving attendance rates.

The school provides pupils with a wide range of interesting opportunities that include clubs, such as arts and crafts, gymnastics, coding, karate, piano and drama. Pupils are proud to showcase their talents and achievements, for example, in assembly and singing with the school's choir.

The school encourages pupils to take initiative and responsibility, for example, by running the school's tuck shop and as members of the school council.

Through the curriculum and in assemblies, pupils are taught to keep themselves safe, especially online. However, encouragement to make healthy choices, to understand healthy relationships and to respect differences between people, including different faiths, cultures and backgrounds, is not taught as precisely.

This is because the key content that the school intends pupils to learn is not set out as thoroughly.

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 number of subjects, the school's curriculum sequencing does not set out clearly the key knowledge pupils need to know and understand at each stage, in order to achieve its ambitious end points, including in the early years.

Without this guidance, teaching focuses on activities, rather than the important concepts pupils need to remember. Teaching does not check routinely that pupils have understood key concepts. As a result, pupils have gaps in their knowledge and struggle to recall key ideas when they move on to new learning.

Leaders must ensure that the curriculum sets out a clear, logical sequence, in order to build knowledge cumulatively and securely over time and to ensure that teaching focuses on these key aims. ? Teaching in phonics does not offer pupils regular practice in hearing and saying the target sounds they are learning. Pupils do not have routine opportunities to read books with the key sounds that they are learning in them.

As a result, pupils do not recall some sounds readily, and this prevents them from reading with fluency. Leaders must ensure that pupils practice phonic sounds regularly and read books that are matched to the sounds they are learning. ? The school's personal development curriculum does not detail what leaders intend all pupils to be taught.

Leaders do not check carefully that pupils have been taught the things that they intend. As a result, pupils do not routinely receive a curriculum that matches leaders' intentions. Leaders must provide clear guidance about what all pupils should be taught and check that teaching routinely delivers the content they intend.

• The school does not make clear what common approaches it expects all staff to use to manage pupils' behaviour and attitudes consistently and how leaders will support staff in doing so. As a result, the behaviour of pupils does not routinely reflect the school's high expectations, and sometimes learning is interrupted in lessons and occasionally poor behaviour persists. Leaders must ensure that all staff follow clear behaviour systems so that behaviour is dealt with effectively and consistently and is good across the school.