Outwood Primary Academy Darfield

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this school?

Classrooms, corridors, the breakfast club and lunchtimes are calm and harmonious at this school. The school teaches pupils to exhibit positive behaviour through their intrinsic curriculum.

This curriculum ensures that there is a culture of high expectations for pupils from Nursery to Year 6. The school ensures that pupils know and understand how being 'safe, respectful and responsible' enables them to successfully access learning.

Pupils enjoy receiving 'super swirls' from the staff.

These 'super swirls' acknowledge a particular action or achievement. Pupils love accumulating the swirls to gain bronze, silver and gold badges.

The school promotes thei...r 'learner model' effectively.

This model comprises five skills and qualities that foster character development and support citizenship. Pupils note when their friends demonstrate these qualities, such as resilience, independence or cooperation, and praise them in assembly each Friday.

The school ensures that pupils have opportunities to discuss and debate in the weekly 'Time to…' session.

These sessions link to the trust's personal, social and health education curriculum but are also responsive to school, local and national issues. Pupils value this time to talk.

Rates of attendance at the school are below the national expectation.

While the school has recently implemented a new procedure to address low attendance, it has not applied it with consistency. As a result, attendance for some pupils continues to decline.

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

The school's curriculum is derived from a central trust structure.

It is well planned and sequenced. The trust supports subject leaders to carry out their roles, developing and refining the curriculum for their subject. The curriculum starts in the early years and builds from simple to complex concepts, knowledge and skills.

The school has considered the essential knowledge they want pupils to learn. The impact of this learning is reflected in the high-quality work pupils produce and the positive end-of-key stage outcomes.

Teachers present information clearly to pupils.

They check pupils' prior knowledge and understanding to ensure knowledge is built incrementally. Adults use booklets to record notes on pupils' progress at the end of every lesson. This ensures that teachers understand where pupils are in their learning journey and how secure they are in their subject knowledge.

The school has prioritised the teaching of early reading and phonics. It ensures that adults who teach phonics in the early years and key stage 1 have regular coaching from an early reading expert. This has improved the quality of the phonics teaching so that in 2023, a high percentage of pupils achieved the expected standard in phonics at the end of Year 1.

Staff check the sounds pupils know regularly. Pupils who are not keeping up with the programme access additional phonics sessions and personalised tutoring. The school implements a reading reward scheme called the 'word count café'.

Pupils receive stamps to redeem for hot chocolate. This encourages and motivates pupils to read more widely and often. However, some pupils' reading books do not accurately match the sounds that they know.

The teaching of mathematics is a strength of the school. The school ensures that pupils revisit important knowledge and concepts over time to continually build on prior learning. Teachers use subject-specific vocabulary appropriately and reinforce key words consistently.

They model methods and approaches to guide pupils through new learning. Adults use skilful questioning frequently to check what pupils know. They are responsive and address gaps in pupils' knowledge quickly.

Pupils are well prepared for their next stages of learning in mathematics.

The ambitious early years curriculum is designed well to teach essential knowledge and appeal to children's interests. Adults inspire and motivate children with creative and imaginative tasks.

The school identifies children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) through a comprehensive transition package when they start in the Nursery. Over time, more children have started the early years with communication needs. As a result, the school has adapted the curriculum to focus on oral language and vocabulary acquisition.

Developing children's core skills in literacy and mathematics is at the heart of all areas of the early years provision.

The school provides pupils with diploma opportunities each term. Pupils are keen to participate in these, and they impact positively on their lives.

For example, Year 1 pupils embarked on a kindness challenge. They visited a local care home to deliver biscuits. Year 6 pupils recalled what to do in a first-aid emergency, competently describing how to perform CPR.

Many staff members joined the school this academic year. They feel supported by the trust and the school's leadership team. They value the trust's networking possibilities available for sharing good practice and planning.

The academy council recognises that the trust has helped to stabilise the staffing structure, enabling the school to continue to develop.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

What does the school need to do to improve?

(Information for the school and appropriate authority)

• Some pupils do not read books that match their phonic knowledge.

This means that these pupils do not have consistent opportunities to apply their phonics knowledge in context. The school should ensure that pupils consistently read books that match their reading stage. ? Some pupils are persistently absent from the school.

These pupils are missing essential learning. They miss out on the ambitious curriculum opportunities the school provides. The school should take effective action to work with families to reduce these persistent absence rates.

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