Pelham Primary School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Main findings

Pelham Primary is a good school.

Pupils enjoy school, have positive attitudes, engage keenly in their learning and achieve well. The headteacher's relentless drive underpins the concerted and effective improvements secured since the previous inspection. As one parent/carer summed it up, 'I have been really impressed with the way the school has developed over the past three years.'

This was typical of the overwhelmingly positive views expressed by most parents and carers. The effective specially resourced provision, including extensive and successful integration with mainstream lessons, ensures that pupils with a hearing impairment also achieve well. Their attainment varies significantly, mai...nly linked to their wide-ranging starting points and other areas of need, but is broadly average overall, in line with that of other pupils.

The bright, stimulating, well-resourced environment in Nursery and Reception gives children a very positive first experience of school and ensures they get off to a good start. Strong relationships at all levels throughout the school contribute well to pupils' outstanding feelings of safety. One pupil commented, 'Teachers are really nice and kind, and help us when things are difficult.'

Despite this, although attendance over recent years has been broadly average, improvements in the rates of attendance since the previous inspection have recently stalled. The school already does much to promote better attendance, but leaders are rightly developing systems currently to allow them to identify absence patterns of particular groups more readily. Teaching across the school is good and sometimes outstanding, resulting in pupils' good progress.

Prominent displays of writing throughout the school celebrate pupils' achievements and effectively illustrate their good and accelerating progress in this area. Although pupils' progress in mathematics is also good, it is not as rapid as it is in English. Teachers do not always match the tasks given to different groups in mathematics precisely enough to their needs to secure the best possible achievement.

Pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities make good progress overall, though it is less consistent than for other pupils. The good quality work produced by pupils indicates that the attainment of current cohorts is rising. However, although there have been improvements, to date, proportionally fewer pupils attain the higher levels at the end of Key Stages 1 and 2 compared with national figures.

The effective leadership and management of the hearing-impaired provision have ensured staff are well deployed to secure the well-being of these pupils, while preventing them from becoming too dependent on additional support. Leaders at different levels, including the governing body, are increasingly involved in evaluating the impact of their actions on improving pupils' outcomes. Consequently, the school knows itself well and takes successful action to secure improvements, for example closing the previous gap between the progress of girls and boys.

Recent refinements to the school's systems for tracking pupils' progress are beginning to enable leaders to compare the performance of different groups more readily. They have good plans to use this information to tackle remaining variations. Considering all this, and that achievement and the curriculum have improved from satisfactory to good, the school has good capacity to sustain further improvement.

Information about the school

This is a larger than average-sized primary school. Most pupils are of White British heritage and the proportion of pupils that speak English as an additional language is below average. The proportion known to be eligible for free school meals is broadly average and rising.

More pupils than average have special educational needs and/or disabilities. The school has the only specially-resourced provision in the local authority for pupils with a hearing impairment. It has places for 18 pupils with a hearing impairment, all of whom have a statement of special educational needs.